Philhealth to verify more poor families excluded from targeting system

By Frances Mae Gevera-Macapagat

Quezon City, April 27 (PIA) – Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) President and Chief Executive Officer Eduardo Banzon asked those poor families not included in the National Households Targeting System (NHTS-PR) for Poverty Reduction list that they may submit their names to Philhealth for coverage.

The office will then ask the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to check and survey these families.

The Philhealth recognizes those listed in the NHTS-PR as the poorest families, however, of the 5.2 million families listed, only 3.2 families are qualified to get the free healthcare insurance premium shouldered by the national government.

Banzon, in today’s Communication News Exchange (CNEX) Briefing and Discussion at the Philippine Information Agency Central Office, bared his plan of advising the DSWD to hold a survey on families who report not included as the poorest.

“ We are also thinking of bringing up to the board the possibility of automatically categorizing indigenous people as part of list of poor families.”, Banzon added.

NHTS-PR is a system recognized by the national government that identified the poorest of the poor families in the country.

The system guarantees the generation and establishment of a socio-economic database of poor households using unified and standard criteria for the identification of poorest families through scientific means.

Philhealth is one of the government agencies that make use of the existing NHTS-PR list along with the Department of Health (DOH), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), and the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Banzon also clarified that the families listed in the NHTS-PR are not necessarily beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps of the DSWD. “Rather, the 4Ps program is just a subset of the entire NHTS-PR list.

Following complaints that some real poor families are not included in the list, Philhealth then asked them to report and the office could advise DSWD to check if these families are indeed qualified.  (PIA/Frances Mae Gevera-Macapagat)