OFWs Denounced PhilHealth As They Increase Premiums to 3% of Monthly Salary

As we all know PhilHealth is a health insurance company that helps Filipinos regardless of their social status and undeniably, it has been very popular since then and now. However, with the new announcement that PhilHealth has made, it catches the attention of our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), why? because PhilHealth reiterates that they will increase OFWs Premium Payments up to 3.0% of their monthly Salary and OFW disagreeing to this measure has gained traction online.

PhilHealth Circular 2020-0014

It is the “Premium Contribution and Collection of Payment of Overseas Filipino Member”, OFWs who earn Php 10,000 to Php 60,000 monthly will pay 3% of their monthly salary as compared to the 2.75% last year.

As per our OFWs, this 3.0% payment might not appear such a huge amount in papers but this will be a big burden for them.

For instance, let’s say that an OFW earns Php 50,000 pesos a month and the 3% of their salary is Php 1,500 so they need to pay Php 1,500 a month or a total of Php 18,000 a year, that is indeed a huge amount to pay. What more if you earn bigger amount?

That is why OFWs seek to repeal. They create an online petition on Change.org to repeal the measure. As of this writing, there were already 287,663 who have signed the petition of repeal.

As per OFWs

“I believe that we OFWs and our dependents have been already struggling amidst this Pandemic and yet Philhealth had issued a very unfair memo regarding premium payments.  I believe that this is already too much of them to ask for an interest rate and a penalty which is very unfair and inhumane for those who travel away from their families to work. It is very unfortunate that they call OFWs modern heroes and yet they penalize us with such directives. We urge the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (Philhealth) to reverse this directive as this is unfair and an abuse to our migrant workers.”

In addition, the table below is from the PhilHealth Facebook page, the contribution will continuously increase year by year where on the year 2025 the contribution for OFWs will increase up to 5% for those who earn Php 10,000 up to Php 100,000 a month and you must take note that the higher you earn the more you pay.