Media

The barrier to common sense has finally been lifted. No IATF rule triggered the greatest resistance and launched the most jokes. And the fact that they stonewalled for a long time and stubbornly defended it, despite evidence to the contrary, inflicted damage on their reputation....

The postponement of K-12 classes should give the Department of Education (DepEd) “breathing space” to print self-learning modules (SLM) for 21.5 million public school students, which Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said “could be around 100 billion pages.”  “My...

They stand shoulder to shoulder with medical staff in public hospitals, but because of their status as private service providers, janitors and security guards are not entitled to hazard and hardship pay despite facing the same health risks.  Taking up the cudgels for them,...

How fast it can reimburse hospitals for COVID-19 screening is the “new speed test” that PhilHealth should pass to debunk mounting complaints that it had been slow in paying frontline facilities.  This challenge was hurled by Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto at...

How to make Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM) releases transparent and open to scrutiny? Post them in the PhilHealth website, which requires no expensive IT software to do. Enumerate the basic data: amount, date of release, recipient institutions and their facility capacity,...

After admitting that it has only 16 auditors deployed at PhilHealth, Sen. Ralph Recto expects the Commission on Audit “to hang up ‘help wanted’ signs” to recruit accountants who will beef up the “COA detachment” in the embattled state health insurer.  “Kahit one auditor...

Whoever are fired or hired, these must be done: 1) More than special audit, PhilHealth requires constant audit. I doubt if COA auditors in that agency number more than 25. Too small for a P140-billion-a-year agency, which transacts 35,000 claims a day from 8,500 hospitals and...

We lost P1.4 trillion during the first half. About P10.8 billion daily from April to June alone. The economy is gasping in the ER and a more robust stimulus package is the ventilator that it needs. A comprehensive health response, especially testing, which in turn will rebuild...