PHILHEALTH TO COVER ALL BRGY OFFICIALS, HEALTH WORKERS

PHILHEALTH TO COVER ALL BRGY OFFICIALS, HEALTH WORKERS

Over 600,000 Barangay officials and health workers in the Philippines’ 42,028 barangays will have government insurance coverage beginning this year, one of the key proponents of the move said on Monday.

“The P500 million allocation for barangay frontliners’ Philippine Health Insurance coverage in the 2015 National Budget was pushed by the Visayan Bloc in Congress,” AAMBIS-Owa Party list representative Sharon Garin said.

The Visayan bloc is a group of 39 lawmakers mostly coming from the Visayas regions in the 290-member chamber.

Rep. Garin who hails from Guimbal, Iloilo said “the government should show that it takes care of its public servants.”

“Section 393 of the Local Government Code of 1991 provides that barangay chairmen should get not less than P1,000 a month while other barangay officials, not less than P600. Their pay is relatively low, so we should give them all the help that they can get,” Garin added.

Barangay Kagawad Francisco “Okik” Francisco of San Nicolas, Pasig City, who once suffered a heart attack and endured paying hospitalization bills, appreciates this enhanced access to health care assistance. 

“We (barangay officials) are enrolled in PhilHealth depending only on the capacity of the barangay to pay our premiums; but, with this development, we will be classified as members earning P8,999 and below and pay P100 as monthly premium,” Francisco said in Filipino.

Official website of the Department of Health (DOH) indicates that 82 percent of the total population or around 80 million Filipinos are already covered by PhilHealth. It says the goal is to increase its coverage to more than 90 percent of the population by the end of this year. /MP