Manulife Philippines senior vice president and chief marketing officer Melissa Henson (Photo courtesy of Manulife)
MANILA – The current pandemic increased Filipinos’ desire to ensure their overall well-being to further protect their families, a study by Manulife Philippines showed.
While most want to ensure the health and welfare of their families, this is far from the reality due to the gap in their perceived goals and their actual behavior.
In a virtual briefing Wednesday, Manulife Philippines senior vice president and chief marketing officer Melissa Henson said results of the online survey, conducted in the first seven months this year to 500 Filipinos nationwide, showed that the respondents’ perceptions are far from reality.
This, after 63 percent said staying healthy and avoiding illness is their top priority, but 41 percent said they are physically inactive.
Also, 50 percent said they drink alcohol and can be considered as binge-drinkers; 29 percent said they are overweight, with 10 percent saying they are obese; and 22 percent said they smoke tobacco regularly.
Henson said the respondents also said they are financially unprepared for critical illness and put their families’ well-being over their personal well-being.
Survey results showed that 80 percent of the respondents believe that cost of treating critical illnesses is higher than what they can afford, 54 percent said health expenditures are paid through the households’ out-of-the-pocket payment, 52 percent believe they are not financially prepared if a family member falls ill, 34 percent said their health-related expenses are financed by government schemes and contributory health financing, and only 12 percent are financed by health plans.
Thus, 77 percent of the respondents said they want to acquire insurance in the next 18 months to cover their life, hospitalization, health, accident, and critical illness.
Among the critical illnesses, cancer is perceived as the most feared because of the expenses it entails.
The other critical illnesses that the respondents consider are heart attack or cardiac arrest, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problem/disease, stroke, accident, coronavirus disease, kidney failure, and disease with no cure or difficult treatment.
Henson said “while Filipinos are universally aware of the importance of staying healthy, we saw that their behaviors are largely influenced by fears and worries, including concern for their family and feeling financially unprepared for illnesses.”
During the same briefing, Manulife president and chief executive officer Richard Bates said he is “pleasantly surprised” on the result of the survey, specifically in terms of the impact of health concerns not just on people’s physical and financial health but only on one’s mental health.
For one, he said respondents’ perception of cancer as the most feared critical illness can be attributed partly to things that a person cannot control.
Bates said some cancers like lung cancer can be due to one’s lifestyle, but other types of cancers are due to something that a person has no control which leads to worries and affects one’s mental health.
He said Manulife Philippines considers as an important aspect of their operations measures to ensure their employees’ mental health, but the survey results prove this area is a major sphere in the health realm.
“So this is something that, for us as an insurance company, we absolutely need to start spending a bit more time looking at,” he added.
Bates said the insurance industry in general, “focus(es) very much on the physical health aspects of what we offer and how we support our customers.”
“But we shouldn’t ever forget that (the) mental health strain of people around you (is) under far more acute than we would typically expect to see,” he added. (PNA)
