News Archive 2003
43.56 Million Filipinos Now Have Health Cards - Duque
- July 16, 2003
Dr. Francisco T. Duque III, President and CEO of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) recently announced that PhilHealth has enrolled more than half of the total RP population.
Some 8.71 million members approximately 43.56 million beneficiaries are now covered by the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP), making PhilHealth inch closer to its mandate of providing coverage to the entire RP population. “This figure is about 53 percent of the entire population,” Duque said, adding that he is “...overwhelmed by the response of our local government as well as the private groups to our campaign to help enrol our indigent families.”
Of the 43.56 million beneficiaries, 44.93 percent or 19.57 million come from the private sector, 23.41 percent or 10.19 million from the government sector and 15.50 percent or 6.75 million are individually paying members. Some 14.47 percent or 6.30 million are enrolled under the Sponsored (formerly indigent) Program and 1.67 percent or 730,495 are retirees or non-paying members.
This year, Duque said, PhilHealth has eyed an enrolment of at least 1.6 million families under the Individually Paying Program (IPP) and another 1.6 million families under the Sponsored Program. As of March this year, however, current enrolment under the IPP was already at 1.5 million and as of May this year, enrolment under the Sponsored Program was already at 1.3 million.
“We owe it to our public whose growing awareness of the need to have health insurance resulted to a phenomenal increase in our membership,” Duque said.
This growing membership, Duque adds, challenges PhilHealth even more by making its services and benefit packages even more responsive to what the members need. This year alone, PhilHealth has already introduced a breakthrough package for childbearing members which now compensates for the second normal delivery.
For the remaining months of the year, PhilHealth hopes to open additional service offices to make its services accessible, as well as introduce other innovations in the area of customer satisfaction. With its goals nearly achieved, PhilHealth certainly knows what it must deliver to its members.