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| PHOTO CREDITS: globalnation.inquirer.net |
IT is another blatant, scandalous
instance of the previous regime’s culture of impunity in violating budget laws.
Just a few months before he
stepped down from power, former President Benigno Aquino 3rd in connivance with
his budget secretary, Florencio Abad, and health secretary, Janette Garin,
hijacked P10.6 billion in funds that were mandated by law to be used for the
insurance premiums of the country’s 7 million senior citizens, according to
government documents.*
This P10.6billion was instead
allocated to dubious health department projects that Congress had not
authorized. At best, these projects were designed to boost the Liberal Party’s
candidates’ chances in the 2016 elections, by prettifying the administration’s
image as taking care of citizens’ health needs.
At worst though— and probably
their real nature—the projects were of the type that since the Republic’s
founding have been widely known as a source of facile corruption: construction
of small structures difficult to monitor if they complied with specifications,
or even if they were built at all.
Another, bigger project of the
Dengvaxia trio?
This P10.6 billion hijacked funds
were triple the P3 billion the Aquino gang spent to buy the defective Dengvaxia
vaccine. The former president’s inordinate rush to purchase it, to the point of
violating budget laws, has raised widespread suspicion of corruption in the
form of commissions.
The Department of Justice, as it
is doing in the case of the Dengvaxia purchase, should mobilize a bigger team
to investigate this alleged hijacking of funds, that if true, has endangered
the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.’s finances and risked the welfare of the
country’s 7 million senior citizens, the most vulnerable sector of its adult
citizenry.
Two laws had ordered the
government to raise this P10.6 billion to fund senior citizens’ insurance
premiums for 2015 with the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth).
Republic Act 10351 of 2012 was the
so-called “sin tax” law, which increased levies on liquor and tobacco. It
required that after deducting a part of the proceeds allocated for small
tobacco farmers from this levy, 80 percent of the remaining balance should be
allocated for the National Health Insurance Program.
This law was followed up by
Republic Act 10645 of 2014, which required that all senior citizens be covered
by Philhealth’s health insurance, to be funded from the sin-tax proceeds.
For 2015, the first year of that
law’s implementation, the budget department and Congress computed that P10.6
billion from the sin tax law proceeds were to be used to fund senior citizens’
insurance premiums. It was included in the Congress’ budget bill sent to Aquino
for signing into law.
President Aquino, however, in his
veto message to Congress in December 2014, instead classified that budget for
senior citizens as part of the national budget’s “Unprogrammed Fund,” which is
essentially a reserve contingent fund set aside for unforeseen developments
that require bigger government expenses.
It is astonishing that Congress
acquiesced to Aquino’s order, which ignored the sin-tax law. That law very
categorically provided that part of the higher levies on sin products be used
to fund senior citizens’ insurance premiums. How could it be classified into
the budget’s “Unprogrammed Fund”?
In August 2015, less than a year
after the May 2016 national elections, Aquino put his plot in motion.
Garin, the new health secretary
Aquino appointed in February 2015 together with Philhealth president Alexander
Padilla—appointed Bureau of Customs head in 1987 by Cory Aquino—asked the
budget secretary, Abad, that “P10.6 billion unprogrammed appropriations” be
used instead for three purposes.
These were the construction of
4,000 “TSeKap health stations” all over the country; equipment for barangay
health stations; and “infrastructure upgrading and equipment provision” for
rural health units. Anyone familiar with corruption in the Philippines would
see that such projects are the easiest for the corrupt to make money out of, as
they are difficult to monitor.
To this day, there has been no
official report or audit if the P10.6 billion was indeed used for the purposes
indicated.
There have been reports though
that less than 10 percent of the health stations were constructed, even as the
contractors had already received the funds for these. In December 2016, a
resolution was filed in the House of Representatives by two congressmen asking
for an investigation of the program to build these heath stations. For some
unknown reason, the investigation was aborted.
There has been no report if
Philhealth ever received P10.6 billion to fund what was calculated as the money
needed to cover senior citizens’ insurance premiums in 2015.
A source claimed it wasn’t. He
explained that obviously the Aquino gang decided to ignore actuarial
calculations that this money was needed.
Eddie Dorotan, a former mayor of a
Bicol town who still is a board member representing local chief executives, was
quoted in March 2016 in the local newspaper Bicol Today that Philhealth was in
dire financial straits. However, then Philhealth CEO Padilla in an interview
with CNN Philippines claimed that this was false, and that the state firm’s
reserve funds were at a healthy P128 billion level in 2015.
Blogger Rafael Nieto—who broke the
story on the hijacking of senior citizens’ funds—reported that in a
presentation made early last year to the Philhealth board by director Anthony
Leachon (who represents the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), three different
financial and actuarial projections showed that the firm would run out of
reserves by the middle of this year.
Obviously the Aquino
administration’s gang of three, as they did in the case of the Dengvaxia
debacle, had absolutely no compunction about risking the lives of millions of
Filipinos.
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