The government will give funding to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) should it run out of reserve funds by 2021, Malacañang said Tuesday.

“Talagang kung maubos po ang pera ng PhilHealth, gobyerno po ang magbibigay ng pondo kaya nga po ang tawag diyan ‘Universal Health Care,’ hindi medical insurance,” Palace spokesman Harry Roque said.

Roque, author of the universal healthcare law, said that PhilHealth was not meant to operate solely through premium contributions.

“We never even for one minute considered that the survival of PhilHealth will solely be by reason of premiums. Alam po namin hindi makakamit ang libreng gamot at libreng pagamot kung premiums lang ang panggagalingan ng gagastusin ng PhilHealth,” he said.

PhilHealth is being investigated by the Senate, the Presidential Management Staff and the Office of the Special Assistant to the President amid corruption allegations.

In a Senate hearing earlier Tuesday, PhilHealth President and Chief Executive Ricardo Morales revealed that about P10.2 billion was lost to fraudulent transactions in 2019.

Nerissa Santiago, PhilHealth data protection officer, also said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the state-run insurance firm was set to suffer losses of P90 billion this year and P140 billion next year. John Ezekiel J. Hirro