Senate OKs PhilHealth coverage for seniors

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate has approved a measure that would authorize the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to cover all senior citizens in the country.

Sen. Ralph Recto, the author of Senate Bill 712 which was approved on third and final reading yesterday, said that there are still a lot of senior citizens or Filipinos aged 60 and above who are not yet covered by PhilHealth for various reasons.

One of the main reasons is that under Republic Act 7432 as amended by

RA 9994, otherwise known as the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, only indigent senior citizens would be covered by PhilHealth.

Recto said the target beneficiaries of the proposed measure are senior citizens who are not lifetime members of PhilHealth, dependents or indigents.

“They’re in the grey area of not being too poor to be officially classified indigents but still cannot afford to enroll themselves in PhilHealth.

“The bill seeks to close this crack where many seniors fall,” Recto said.

The bill would amend Section 5 of the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 on the mandatory coverage of Philhealth so that all senior citizens would be covered.

Based on the bill, the necessary funding for the mandatory coverage of all senior citizens would be sourced from the National Health Insurance Fund of PhilHealth.

“Enrolling them must be automatic, not optional. The ideal is that the minute they blow out the candles on their 60th birthday cake to the moment they breathe their last, they should be PhilHealth members,” Recto said.

Recto noted that currently, there are an estimated 6.1 million senior citizens in the country but only 3.9 million are PhilHealth members as of June 5, 2014.

He said that the estimated funding requirement for the coverage of the additional senior citizens would be equivalent to premium payments worth P5.2 billion a year, which he said could be sourced from the National Health Insurance Fund of PhilHealth.

PhilHealth, as of December 2013, has 31.27 million registered members and 45.63 million dependents.