Philhealth, ang Kuripot Mo!

The lonely hospital corridors
(while waiting for word from the doc about Papa's operation)

 

When my Papa was hospitalized last May, a representative from the Philhealth went to his room and talked to me about the requirements to get Philhealth benefits. She further explained that Philhealth provides better benefits now and combined with the Senior Citizen's Discount since my Papa was a Senior Citizen, a patient should no longer worry too much  about the hospital bills.  To quote, she said, "mas okay na po ang benefits ng Philhealth ngayon. Minsan nga, halos wala nang binabayaran ang pasyente dahil may Philhealth na at may Senior pa." Wow, this was good, I thought.

 

Papa was going to go under the knife that evening when the Philhealth representative visited us.  While money shouldn't be a problem, he was worried so much about how much it would cost so we told him that everything is going to be shouldered by my brother's health card. He was able to breathe.  We were all hoping that the Senior's discount plus the Philhealth benefit would help cushion the hospital bills.

 

The operation went on smoothly and Papa was brought back to the room. He said he felt better, but complained about the "hiwa". After 24 hours from the operation, he developed pneumonia, or they call it hospital-acquired pneumonia. So Papa was brought to the ICU. He stayed there from Thursday at around noon, to Sunday at 7:30 am. That's when he passed away.

 

When we were settling the bill, it was a whopping P396,000.00+++. That was for about 6 days (from Tuesday at 1 am to Sunday at 7:30).  We checked the senior citizen discount - it was 20%! Yey!!! We checked the Philhealth benefit and guess what? It was a whopping... tadaaan... P10,000.00. Sarcastic ako. As in.  So the bill that was left was still P310,000.00.

 

So what happened to the line, "mas okay na ang benefits ng Philhealth ngayon"?

 

We asked the Philhealth people to explain the pathetic benefit that we were given. And she just said, it's because of the diagnosis. There was an operation, there was ICU, there were doctor's fees and we only got P10,000.00 after  being deducted a monthly contribution for sooooo many years?

Disappointing.