President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. visited patients at the Bataan General Hospital and Medical Center in Balanga, Bataan on Sept. 22. — PPA POOL/REVOLI CORTEZ

A SENATOR on Sunday proposed transferring the budget of the Health department’s medical financial aid program to fund the “zero-balance billing” program in public hospitals, which guarantees patients no out-of-pocket expenses for covered services.

Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian, who heads the Senate Finance committee, proposed to place funding for the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP) Program into the zero-balance billing program.

“Let’s just put MAIFIP in the zero-balance billing program. We should reform our Universal Health Care to ensure access to quality health services for all Filipinos without financial hardship,” he said in a statement.

The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) currently shoulders the full cost of covered services under the program. The services include room and board, medicines, laboratory tests and professional fees, ensuring that patients do not pay anything on top of their coverage. It only applies to patients admitted to ward-type hospital accommodations.

The MAIFIP program has an allocation of P49.2 billion under the proposed 2026 national spending plan.

“It pains me to see some people queuing up at politicians’ offices,” Mr. Gatchalian added. “We are putting the decision-making power on life and death in the hands of the politicians, which is not the right thing to do because the system should help our constituents.”

He said that the zero-balance billing program and PhilHealth programs would be able to support patients in public hospitals.

He also noted that there is a need to increase the capacity of public hospitals due to the zero-balance program. — Adrian H. Halili