Payment of premium to secure OEC not required, says Philhealth

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) clarified Tuesday it has not implemented the requirement for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to pay their premiums before they are able to secure their overseas employment certificate (OEC).

During the online meeting of the joint congressional oversight committee on Universal Health Care (UHC) Law, PhilHealth President and CEO Ricardo Morales said while this was in the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the law, this “has not been implemented.”

“If I remember, this has not been implemented,” Morales said, responding to Senator Bong Go’s inquiry on the said requirement.

“What we asked the OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) to help us with is to register the departing OFWs but not to collect, and not to make it (premium collection) a requirement for the issuance of the overseas employment certificate. So it has not been made a requirement for departure,” Morales added.

Asked if it can be removed from the IRR, Morales said they will study the possible deletion of the provision.

“We wanted to register ‘yung mga departing OFWs because we have almost 7 to 10 million overseas Filipinos pero ang nakaregister sa amin as members are only about 360,000,” Morales said.

“So ang baba ng enrollment natin. We were hoping to capture the records of departing OFWs… ‘Yung membership natin, kasi hindi natin alam kung ilan OFWs natin. Although we have a large number, walang detalye ng membership,” he added.

But should the provision be removed from the IRR, Morales said they can try data sharing with other government agencies such as OWWA and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) as well as manning agencies.

“Maybe we could ask assistance from them to complete our membership database,” Morales said.