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BY PRINCE GOLEZ
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Thursday, March 1, 2018
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MANILA – Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara is expected to call on the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to expand its primary care package to include preventive and promotive health services.
Angara is in Iloilo today for the Liga ng Barangay Iloilo General Assembly and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra concert tomorrow.
Angara will be the convention’s guest of honor and speaker, and will watch the symphony orchestra perform at the Iloilo Convention Center in Mandurriao, Iloilo City.
The primary care package of PhilHealth currently includes standard health checkups and medicines for asthma, pneumonia, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension, among others.
According to Angara, an executive health checkup and the corresponding laboratory tests “can be costly, enough to eat up much more of one’s earnings.”
He added, “Filipino families still bear the brunt of healthcare in the Philippines.”
The senator cited a Philippine Statistics Authority study showing that household out-of-pocket payments accounted for 54.2 percent of the country’s current expenditure in 2016.
Another study – by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies – showed no improvement of out-of-pocket spending for healthcare since 2008.
Even if the prices of healthcare and medicines are reduced to at-cost levels, Angara said the poor still won’t benefit because the reduced price of services and medicines remains beyond their capacity.
“Hence, the provision of free, and not just cheaper, health services and medicines through social health insurance and other funding sources to support the poor is crucial to achieve improved health outcomes,” he stressed./PN
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