"Let the chips fall where they may, regardless of political color or affiliation."
Corruption within the bureaucracy has been a scourge that all past presidents had to battle with—some winning more than the others, but none emerging truly victorious. It remains a social menace that President Rodrigo Duterte has been trying to address since Day One of his administration, and will continue to be a headache for future leaders long after the next presidential elections in 2022.
Corruption is not a novel disease, unlike the coronavirus that is besetting the country. It is a deeply-rooted sickness, the systemic kind, such that, without fail, politicians run on an anti-corruption platform every three years—either trying to make a genuine impact or trying to make their bank accounts all the fatter.
But perhaps there is no worse form of corruption than one that feeds off public funds for health services, and especially at a time when the government is scrambling for every available peso to sustain its COVID-19 response and recovery program.
The allegations of corruption hounding the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. are damning, to say the least. No less than its resigned CEO, Ricardo Morales, admitted during a Senate hearing that about P10.2 billion of the state insurer’s budget were “potentially lost” to fraudulent transactions and schemes in 2019.
Resigned anti-fraud officer Thorsson Keith put the figure at P15 billion. He said the so-called PhilHealth “mafia” stole the funds through fraudulent schemes such as the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM). Keith likened the massive anomalous transactions in the agency to a pandemic, calling it the “crime of the year.” And this was just in 2019 alone.
In fact, in June last year, no less than President Duterte disclosed in a public address that the insurance company lost as much as P154 billion over the years to various types of fraud, including reimbursements for ghost dialysis patients, overpayments, and upcasing.
“For the sheer amount that was lost, I have to reorganize your entity, change maybe all of you and install a more (efficient) systems of accounting and accountability,” the President said. “As of last count, it (losses) was about 154 something, if I’m not mistaken, billion.”
Back then, the President said PhilHealth probably needs a “military man” to cleanse its ranks.
President Duterte said he “does not have the slightest doubt about the integrity and honesty” of then PhilHealth CEO Roy Ferrer, but eventually replaced the latter with Morales, a retired Army general, a few days after disclosing the massive losses of the agency.
That there are questionable transactions in PhilHealth is nothing new. But that these anomalies would continue even during the pandemic is truly one for the books.
According to the House Committees on Public Accounts and on Good Government, there were irregularities in the distribution of at least P14 billion in IRM funds to hospitals and clinics dealing with COVID-19 patients as of May. PhilHealth allegedly released funds even to healthcare institutions that did not handle coronavirus cases, such as maternity and dialysis centers. Of the total amount released, only P1 billion has been accounted for.
The President has since formed a task force to get to the bottom of PhilHealth’s massive web of corruption. He has empowered the task force to conduct lifestyle checks on key personnel and officials, as well as file administrative and anti-graft cases and order preventive suspension as may be warranted.
“I will end you, believe me… If you managed to give other presidents the slip, under my administration I will run you aground,” President Duterte said.
Let the chips fall where they may, regardless of the political color or affiliation of the neck that needs to be severed. Stealing public funds, especially public funds for health services, with impunity should be the exception and not the norm.
According to Morales, who has since resigned for health reasons, not even Superman could solve the systemic corruption in PhilHealth. The reverse is also true. It does not take super villains to be corrupt.
All it takes are greedy ordinary people willing to bleed public coffers dry and make a killing in the midst of a health crisis, and the complicit silence of good men and women who choose to look the other way.
V Arcena is the Assistant Secretary for Global Media and Public Affairs of PCOO. Prior to joining the Philippine government, he previously worked for the U.S. Department of State’s Asia-Pacific Regional Media Hub. A former journalist and Palace reporter of TV5, JV covered politics, elections, global and regional issues, calamities, the judiciary, among others.