Kathmandu. Philippine finance chief has been charged with transferring money from the country’s state-owned insurance company to the national treasury. <\/p>\n
Dr. Tony Lichon, a health reform advocate and former health adviser, made the allegations. He filed a lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Ralph Recto on charges of looting the ombudsman’s office and technical irregularities over transfers of 60 billion ($1 billion) in local currency from the PhilHealth Reserve Fund and 107 billion ($1.8 billion) from the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC). Leichon also filed the lawsuit against board chairman Teodoro Herbosa, acting finance secretary Frederick Go, former budget secretary Rolando Toledo, Philhealth president and CEO Edwin Mercado, former Philhealth CEO Emanuel Ledesma Jr., corporation CEO Roberto Tan, and several John and Jane Du, who represent other directors and officers. <\/p>\n
In 2025, Recto approved the transfer of the local currency from PhilHealth’s reserve fund to the national treasury. He called it “legally, morally and financially sound”. “This claim is unsubstantiated under the Universal Health Care Act and the Sin Tax,” Lichon said. These funds need to stay at PhilHealth to help poorer members and primary care. \u2019<\/p>\n
“The result: PhilHealth lost 356.6 billion local currency from 2023 to 2025, unpaid hospitals, underfunded cancer and dialysis programs, and millions of Filipinos denied care,” Dr. Lichon said. It undermined people’s trust. \u2019<\/p>\n
Recto said the allegations were “completely disturbing” and that the legal validity of the move would be upheld. But, Dr Lichon said: “Recto is a signal that politicians are hyping up the issue.” I categorically reject it. This isn’t about political drama, it’s about the plight of patients who can’t access dialysis, families in debt and hospitals forced into bankruptcy. No amount of rhetoric can erase the human value of these things. \u2014Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu. Philippine finance chief has been charged with transferring money from the country’s state-owned insurance company to the national treasury. Dr. Tony Lichon, a health reform advocate and former health adviser, made the allegations. He filed a lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Ralph Recto on charges of looting the ombudsman’s office and technical irregularities over transfers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":207122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45044,45159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news-en","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301197,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301196\/revisions\/301197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media\/207122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}