PhilHealth’s expanded benefit packages are now delivering tangible results for millions of Filipinos by reducing out-of-pocket health expenses.
Over the past two weeks President Marcos and PhilHealth president and CEO Edwin Mercado personally witnessed how these reforms are transforming health care access in two leading private hospitals.
On May 1 the President and Mercado visited St. Elizabeth Hospital Inc. where PhilHealth members were actively benefiting from the agency’s expanded health care packages including YAKAP primary care consultations cancer treatment services and life-sustaining dialysis care.
Last May 11 the President visited The Medical City in Ortigas where he inspected the newly opened Alfredo R.A. Bengzon Patient Access Ward a 51-bed facility designed to provide world-class health care services to PhilHealth members with little to no out-of-pocket expenses.
Patients and their families shared how expanded PhilHealth coverage protected them from catastrophic medical expenses. Mercado said “The question is not capability but will – the will to look at every PhilHealth member and say ‘You belong here too.’” PhilHealth is calling on more private hospitals to join the mission.