Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua (PNA File Photo)
MANILA -- The government will not be able to fully finance the Universal Health Care (UHC) Law if lawmakers will not approve the Department of Finance (DOF)-proposed excise tax hikes on sin products, according to a finance official.
This was stressed by Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua on Thursday after the organizational briefing on tax reform packages of the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee.
“So what that means is if there is no further increase in the Senate, the UHC is not fully funded, therefore, some people won’t get the service or everyone gets slightly lower quality of service,” he said.
Chua, however, declined to give figures of the would-be affected beneficiaries, noting the Department of Health (DOH) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) “know this better.”
But he said they remain confident that the measure will achieve more success in the Senate.
“We still have time to improve upon it in the Senate,” he added.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee adopted a House bill increasing taxes on alcohol products that was approved on third reading, but failed the plenary in the 17th Congress.
Chua said gains from the measure on its first year of implementation are estimated at PHP17 billion, about half of the PHP33 billion under the DOF proposal.
Earlier, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said about 250,000 Filipinos are at risk of not getting proper medical care every year if the UHC will not get enough funding.
The government estimates the program’s five-year funding requirement to be around PHP1.437 trillion. (PNA)
