PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has approved the Department of Health’s proposal to create a body that will monitor how a special fund under the country’s 2019 Universal Health Care (UHC) law is spent.
“There is going to be a special health fund which is actually emphasized in the law and that’s why we created the council to watch the spending of the money,” Health Secretary Teodoro J. Herbosa said at a Palace briefing. “The implementation would be standard for all different local government units (LGUs).”
Republic Act No. 11223, the UHC Act, mandates the province-wide or city-wide health system to manage, through a special health fund, all resources intended for health expenditures, including population-based and individual-based health services, health system operating costs, capital investments, and remuneration of additional health workers and incentives for all health workers.
The law sought to expand public access to health services by enrolling all Filipinos in the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation’s (PhilHealth) National Health Insurance Program.
It aimed to reform local health care systems and financing, with local funds being highly susceptible to reallocation to other expenditures other than healthcare prior to the law’s implementation.
Mr. Herbosa noted that the county’s 30-year-old Local Government Code tasked municipal mayors and governors to manage local health systems, while the 2019 UHC law aims to “integrate health systems” — from the local to the national levels.
He said the President knows that there are diverse implementations of national laws so he wants to create “a national standard.” “That’s where the council would be able to police or monitor how LGUs and local health systems will be spending funds or income from PhilHealth,” he said.
“Income from the other local government units and how the health system can be improved because our health systems are diverse — some are very good, some are very weak — so, depending on what their levels are, that’s how the spending will come,” he added.
Mr. Herbosa said the President also tasked them to compute “how much it would cost to have equitable healthcare.” “So, that’s the other direction that the council will be [going to],” he added. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza
