Sen. Grace Poe at the Senate. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The marathon Senate hearings on alleged corruption within the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) showed the “gross incompetence” among the agency’s leadership, Senator Grace Poe said.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, not just to the senators conducting the hearing, but also to the general public that PhilHealth has wasted billions in funding to could have gone to other patients that needed it,” Poe said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel on Thursday.
“There’s gross incompetence among the leadership and I think that there are several of them who are actually liable,” she added.
During the Senate hearings, PhilHealth president and CEO Ricardo Morales and other officials were grilled over the questionable release of funds through its Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM) as well as the planned procurement of “grossly overpriced” IT equipment, among others.
In a Senate hearing last August 4, a resigned PhilHealth anti-fraud officer also alleged that a mafia-like syndicate, which he said is composed of the agency’s executive committee members, has pocketed P15 billion through various schemes, including the release of funds through the IRM.
PhilHealth has denied this claim in the “strongest terms.”
Aside from the Senate probe, PhilHealth is also being investigated by the House of Representatives, Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) and a task force created by President Rodrigo Duterte and led by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
‘Overhaul’
Poe said an overhaul of PhilHealth’s top management would be ideal as corruption allegations continue to hound the state insurer.
“We’ve seen that the board members, especially the heads, are either grossly incompetent or complicit or negligent so those are just the three things that we are looking at, I think that if you’re guilty of one of those, then you don’t deserve a post, especially at this time that we have this pandemic when we rely on the leadership of PhilHealth and the Department of Health,” the senator said.
She added that a proper audit of PhilHealth’s transactions should be done.
The Senate is set to come out with its findings on the issue after a series of hearings in the past three weeks.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the chamber’s findings will be forwarded to the DOJ.