COMMENTARY | Where bills turn to ash
Was it a faulty navigation of pennies that caused it to seemingly just burn without sufficient change to surface? Or was it the moth-filled hands, long been caught by greed, that set fire to pennies meant for the vulnerable?
Nearing the end of this year, the focus shifts to healthcare needs. With a 4.72% allocation in the 2026 National Expenditure Program, the health sector garnered a total of ₱320.5 billion budget from its appeal of monetary fund increase. Department of Health (DOH), along with PhilHealth and Specialty Hospitals, houses the wider implementation of the Zero-Billing Program nationwide. This policy ensures coverage of hospital bills for all PhilHealth members availing basic and ward accommodations who are admitted to DOH-retained hospitals. As an expansion of the original No Balance Billing in 2011, it handles room and board charges, professional fees, medicines, diagnostic tests, and other essential services to assist Filipinos in attaining accessible and affordable healthcare.
It is within almost every Filipino household to choose. The stomach aches that seemed to have taken you apart, or the coughs that were louder than your sanity, were always there. Prioritization of health was always within most, but never all. And no, it was neither a lack of sympathy nor concern, but an expensive choice for mere survival. That a bag of rice for their children was chosen rather than a single pill for themselves. That pennies for a hospital bed was nowhere near possible because there was still a roof left to be fixed. Healthcare should never be reduced to choices of necessity, but rather taken into account for prioritization. Every breath should not feel as if it needs to be paid for. Zero-Balance Billing is not merely a program, but rather a vision of relief — a shelter to cater to the vulnerable.
Allocating enough funds not only treats those who suffer, but also protects those who don’t. Despite the Universal Health Care (UHC) law passed in 2019, the promises for accessible healthcare remain whispers. It was trying to ignite a continuous flame, yet ended up sparking only a few. Only 87 hospitals have rolled out Zero-Balance Billing. Countless people still squirm in their own beds, left to be treated by their family rather than by the hands of those who can cure. A program that also allocates funds to provide hospital rooms for free.
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In the Bicol Region, only five DOH hospitals mandated the Zero Billing Program out of the countless hospitals within the region. No equation could solve how those five hospitals could ever accommodate all those at the center of this program, as if trying to solve only letters — it was insanely impossible to figure out. The revision of the new program does not only extend an expansion for funding more DOH hospitals in Bicol, but rather allocates those funds for hospitals that have tests and equipment available within the facility. It is the constant searching for another hospital that will cater to their needs, and most are found within hospitals owned by the private sectors. It was not the availability that deemed you unlucky, but rather the limitations of those available options that did. Through this, people can access not only free accommodation, nutrition-based food, and medications, but also tests, scans, and even treatment interventions. This does not solely accommodate people but helps sustain budgetary flows in a manner that would prevent and protect those vulnerable, helping clinics with the availability of equipment and medical health care, available for anticipated future cases.
Despite these initial plans for the program and its benefits to the people, there is a growing worry that pennies allocated to healthcare will be left for moths — for those hungry to burn papers of money, not to sustain more lives, but to sustain luxuries for greedy pockets.
Healthcare should be run in a system where people worry about test results, not medical bills. Our healthcare system has always been a burning house — always on the edge, too heavy to bear. Success will only come when every peso is spent on lives, rather than lost to flames. After all, one must worry about when to get medications, and not how to. — Beatrice Freyr Bermundo, The Vital Signs
References:
Philippine Council for Health Research and Development. (2024, August 21). Call for proposals: A landscape analysis on the PhilHealth No balance Billing Policy — Philippine Council for Health Research and Development. https://www.pchrd.dost.gov.ph/calls_and_events/call-for-proposals-a-landscape-analysis-on-the-philhealth-no-balance-billing-policy
FY 2025 Budget-at-a-Glance. (n.d.). https://www.dbm.gov.ph/index.php/2025/2025-peoples-budget?view=article&id=2901:fy-2025-budget-at-a-glance&catid=351
