23 hours ago
3
Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!
Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.
Visit Suniway.ph to learn
December 18, 2025 | 2:49pm
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) will receive an additional P16.5 billion after the bicameral conference committee approved the realignment of savings from the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) budget.
This brings PhilHealth’s 2026 budget to P129.76 billion, up from zero government subsidy in 2025.
The amount, approved Thursday morning, December 19, includes a P53.13 billion subsidy for the National Health Insurance Program and the now restored P60 billion that had been wrongfully remitted to the national treasury in 2024.
On the fourth day of bicameral talks, Senate Finance Committee Chair Sherwin Gatchalian said the Senate’s recalculation of DPWH project costs generated P20.7 billion in savings, allowing for the P16.5 billion increase.
He said the increase stemmed from a proposal by Sens. Loren Legarda, Risa Hontiveros and Pia Cayetano to realign DPWH funds to PhilHealth.
Legarda said the P16.5 billion figure was based on the lack of sin tax allocations that should have long been earmarked for PhilHealth as mandated by law.
“According to the sin tax law, there is a shortfall of P16.5 billion, and that is what we have consistently raised on the plenary,” Legarda said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“I think that in many years, this is the first time that the budget for PhilHealth will be accurate and fully funded according to the correct computation under the sin tax law,” she added.
How PhilHealth got its budget back
The state insurer’s budget has been a point of contention among lawmakers since 2024. Congress struggled with what to do with its “unused excess funds” and large reserves, only to decide that such funds be diverted as unprogrammed funds in 2024, and in 2025, zero its government subsidy instead.
However, the issue with the excess funds was not where to allocate them, but how efficiently PhilHealth would use them.
Civil society groups eventually challenged the transfer of P89.9 billion in PhilHealth funds before the Supreme Court, leading to oral arguments that questioned the Department of Health, the Department of Finance and the solicitor general.
In its December ruling, the Supreme Court said there is no such thing as “unused excess funds” under the Universal Health Care Act. These so-called excess funds are mandated by law to be used in improving benefit packages and case rates while lowering contributions.
The Supreme Court also said that sin tax laws act as safeguards for the country’s universal healthcare program, as excise taxes are exclusively earmarked for it — meaning a zero government subsidy is not permissible and that there is a proper computation for its allocation, like the Senate argued.
RELATED: SC justice: Sin tax funds must go to PhilHealth, universal healthcare as mandated by law
Since only P60 billion was transferred and the rest kept by PhilHealth under a temporary restraining order, President Bongbong Marcos directed Congress to restore the P60 billion using DPWH flood control funds.
This aligns with the Supreme Court’s order to return the P60 billion, a ruling made months after Marcos’ announcement.
Gatchalian said the P16.5 billion increase should allow Filipinos to access better benefit packages and lower contribution rates, further reducing out-of-pocket expenses.
The House contingent backed the Senate’s proposal, saying it was necessary to balance the reduction of overpriced components in DPWH projects with the allocation of public funds to priority programs that can be effectively implemented.
“And with the reduction applied by the new exercise of adjusting the adjustment factors, we are able to lessen the number of projects that are rendered unimplementable,” House Appropriations Chair Mikaela Suansing said.
DPWH budget approved, but how much?
House and Senate conferees had been at an impasse for the past two days over the DPWH’s request to restore P45 billion in its budget due to computational errors in material costs that the agency said would affect the implementation of 10,000 projects.
It was only on the fourth day of bicam talks that the committee finally reached an agreement on what to do with the agency’s request.
The decision, which saw P20.7 billion in savings, followed a recomputation of construction material prices, which lawmakers said are now closer to actual costs and no longer overpriced.
Aside from PhilHealth, the National Disaster Risk Reduction Fund had also received a P4.2 billion increase from the generated savings. The bicam said this would be necessary for calamity response, raising the fund’s total budget to P39.82 billion.
While the bicam committee approved the DPWH’s budget, it remains unclear based on the livestreamed deliberations just how much the agency would receive in total, given the P20.7 billion in identified “savings.”
In other words, it is still uncertain whether the P20.7 billion represents a reduction from the DPWH’s P45-billion restoration request or from the final approved budget.
