Board Member Melvin Ibañez, chairman of the Committee on Health of the Negros Occidental Sangguniang Panlalawigan, yesterday urged the medical community to call for a rapid and immediate investigation into what he called the PhilHealth cataract scam so that it will not affect the national medicare program for the benefit of the poor.

Ibañez especially called on the Philippine College of Ophthalmology to condemn the alleged “scam” using cataract patients, and for PhilHealth and Congress to investigate deeper into the mess.

There is truth to claims that some doctors recruit poor patients who are PhilHealth members in the guise of medical missions involving foundations for free operations, to gain millions of pesos from PhilHealth through reimbursements, Ibañez said.

This has caused PhilHealth to bleed, to the detriment of the entire health care beneficiaries, he said.

PhilHealth stopped its cataract program because only a few doctors and institutions profited from it, he said.

It is also sad that decent eye doctors and new resident doctors will be affected by this, he said.

Our government should conduct a fast and honest investigation of those responsible to ensure justice and to resume the cataract program right away to serve poor patients, Ibañez said.

Early this month, PhilHealth filed administrative cases against four doctors and three hospitals in the Western Visayas in relation to irregularities in insurance claims for cataract surgeries.

The doctors and hospitals are facing 32 counts of violations of the National Health Insurance Act before the PhilHealth's prosecution department, lawyer Jay Villegas of PhilHealth said.

The doctors and hospitals facing raps submitted the highest claims for cataract surgeries, he said.*CPG

back to top