The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) plans to register indigenous peoples (IPs) into the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) through its Konsultasyong Sulit at Tama (Konsulta).
In a virtual media forum on Wednesday, PhilHealth Vice President for Member Management Oscar Abadu Jr. reported that 94,932,084 Filipinos are members of the state-insurer with 52,177,322 of them listed as registered members and 42,754,762 are dependents.
Abadu also said majority of the 15,248,125 unregistered members are IPs and people living in far-flung areas.
To enroll all IPs into the NHIP, Abadu said PhilHealth would “heavily need the assistance of the local government units (LGUs)”.
“With the Konsulta program, with the hope na lahat ng Pilipino ay registered sa isang (that all Filipinos are registered in a) Konsulta provider. We also hope that, through the assistance of Department of Health (DOH), of course, with their barangay health workers, similar to the model, that if we can capture them to go to a primary care facility, get themselves registered to a primary care facility, we’ll be able to capture them. That is the current approach,” he said.
The PhilHealth Konsulta program integrates the existing Primary Care Benefits and Extended Primary Care packages that shall be made available to all Filipinos with the passage of Republic Act 11233 or the Universal Health Care Act.
Abadu said PhilHealth is collaborating with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to register all the IPs into the NHIP.
“In some regions, we have already partnered with the agency in charge of the indigenous people, the NCIP, there’s a constant partnership with the NCIP with regards to the number and to the names of the individuals,” he said.
The Universal Health Care aims to enroll all Filipinos into the PhilHealth through which medical services funds are provided.
While the enrolment timeline is yet to be defined, Abadu said the PhilHealth targets to accredit Rural Health Units providing point of care by 2021 and it will start with the list from the DOH.
“The point of care enrollment is available since 2017, and we call this from a point of care, we elevated this to a point of service provision, so since 2017 the point of service, nakaka-avail ang mga mahihirap. So, ang basic condition dito ay ikaw ay mahirap na na-certify ng medical social worker na ikaw ay hindi member o hindi nakapagbayad ng premium, so automatikong member ka (the poor can avail of it. So, the basic condition is you’re poor and certified by a medical social worker that you’re not a member or unable to pay premiums, so you’re an automatic member),” he added. (PNA)
