Nearly all members of the Senate on Tuesday recommended the filing of criminal charges against Health Secretary Francisco Duque and former PhilHealth President Ricardo Morales for allowing a cash advance scheme which they said contributed to corruption in the state-run insurer.
Senate President Tito Sotto presented the findings of the Committee of the Whole, signed by 22 senators, that also recommended criminal and administrative charges against past and present officials of PhilHealth.
The system in question, IRM or Interim Reimbursement Mechanism, was meant to make funds readily available during calamities such as the Taal Volcano eruption and COVID-19 but implementation was both "shoddy and shady," Sotto said.
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For COVID-19, P26.8 billion was allocated for the year under the IRM when the estimated cost was P3.3 billion, Sotto said. "Why did it so? This bolsters the argument that the 90-day historical claims of hospitals as metrics was not really based on facts; but on surmises plucked from ether," he said.
"As if this cataclysm that has befallen us is not yet devastating enough, we are made to suffer another catastrophe... the endemic corruption and gross mismanagement of PhilHealth," Sotto said. "If not corrected or eradicated will pose grave risks not only to health, but also to the lives of all Filipinos."
The Senate recommended ordering hospitals to immediately liquidate their share of cash advances or IRM and increase the role of the Commission on Audit on PhilHealth.
On Monday, President Rodrigo Duterte appointed former National Bureau of Investigation chief Dante Gierran to replace Morales, who quit last week citing poor health. Duterte vouched for Gierran as a "brave one (matapang ito)," in livestreamed meeting.
"All I have to do is to restore the trust and confidence of our people to PhilHealth. Restoring the trust and confidence of our people to PhilHealth is equivalent to restoring the trust and confidence to our governance," Gierran told the President.