PhilHealth president Dr. Eduardo Banzon and LPG-MA Rep. Arnel Ty during the signing of an agreement that subsidize annual health care premiums of poor families for the next two years.
ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 1, 2011) – The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) and the LPG Marketers’ Association (LPG-MA) have both agreed to use a portion of the party-list group’s Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to subsidize the annual premiums of indigent families for the next two years.
“We applaud LPG-MA’s resolve to help advance President Aquino’s aspiration to provide every Filipino family adequate health insurance protection. We at Philhealth adhere to the principle that access to insurance is part of an individual’s right to health and is the responsibility of the State and society as a whole,” PhilHealth president Dr. Eduardo Banzon said.
Ty said LPG-MA is initially targeting poverty-stricken families in a highly urbanized city in Central Visayas as initial beneficiaries of the premium subsidy project.
“Many party-list groups have already committed the bulk of their PDAF allotments to projects in Luzon. We are reaching out to the Visayas partly to compensate for the imbalance in resource allocation,” LPG-MA Rep. Arnel Ty said.
Both groups signed a memorandum of agreement.
“Once we’ve selected the city, we will leave it up to the mayor and the barangay officials there to identify the needy family heads or individuals to be enrolled as new PhilHealth members,” Ty said.
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