MANILA, Philippines — A civil society group has called on the Marcos administration to pursue criminal charges against officials involved in the alleged illegal transfer of P60 billion in excess funds from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to the national treasury in 2024.
The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg) urged Congress, the Commission on Audit (COA), and the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate how the P60 billion in unutilized PhilHealth subsidies was used and to hold accountable all officials who authorized and approved the realignment, as reflected in the bicameral conference committee report for the 2024 General Appropriations Bill (GAB).
The call followed a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, which struck down a special provision of the 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA)—passed by Congress and signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—as well as a circular issued by the Department of Finance (DOF), then headed by now Executive Secretary Ralph Recto, authorizing the transfer. The Court ruled that the move constituted grave abuse of discretion.
The high court also ordered the government to return the ₱60 billion remitted to the national treasury to PhilHealth through the 2026 GAA.
However, Cenpeg—one of the civil society organizations accredited by Congress to participate in the 2026 budget deliberations—insisted that the government should “immediately return the actual funds, not through new allocations,” which it said would again be shouldered by taxpayers.
“It should not be taken again from the people’s taxes what should have been returned in the first place,” Cenpeg chair and retired University of the Philippines professor Roland Simbulan said.
“The question now is: Where is the P60 billion that Recto took from PhilHealth? Why not compel the return of that very money?” he added.
Cenpeg warned that replacing the missing amount with a new budget item would effectively double the fiscal burden on the public while shielding those responsible for the diversion from accountability. It stressed that such a move would neither comply with the Supreme Court ruling nor promote transparency.
“The solution is not to take money again from the people’s pockets. The solution is accountability,” Simbulan said. “What is needed is the actual recovery and return of the lost funds.”
According to Cenpeg, only the return of the original P60 billion would fulfill the government’s duty of accountability and restore public trust in universal health care and PhilHealth.
Earlier, the Nagkaisa Labor Coalition called for Recto’s resignation, accusing him of “unrepentant incompetence” over his alleged role in the diversion of PhilHealth funds.
Four Supreme Court justices, however, said Recto bore no criminal liability, noting that he “acted in good faith” in implementing the special provision of the 2024 budget law ordering the transfer of excess PhilHealth funds to support unprogrammed appropriations.
During the first day of bicameral conference committee hearings on the 2026 budget on Saturday, Senator Imee Marcos flagged that P13 billion of the diverted P60 billion was used as government counterpart funding for foreign-assisted projects (FAPs). She questioned why funds intended for health care were used for such purposes.
“We’re going to allocate P60 billion for the second time. That’s a big amount, and we need to account for that,” Marcos said.
“We don’t want it to suddenly turn into government counterpart funding for FAPs that have nothing to do with the health of our countrymen,” she added.
According to the DOF and the Department of Health (DOH), portions of the P60 billion were also used for the following:
