The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) has been urged by Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa to return wasted and idle funds to the national government. Herbosa argues that these funds should be returned because they were not savings.

"It's not from the members' contributions. This is not from their reserve fund; this is not from their investments. This is government money that PhilHealth was unable to absorb," Herbosa said.

"The problem is that for the past three years, these funds are in excess of what they registered," he added.

The chief of health proposes that PhilHealth, with the third-highest budget among executive bodies, might raise member benefits even after surrendering surplus cash.

According to the government, the distribution of new benefits this year will not be impacted by the repatriation of PhilHealth's surplus cash. Government executives have said in the past that there will be more than twice as many generic medications available—from 21 to 53—for outpatient treatments such as hypertension.

Furthermore, PhilHealth will nearly treble benefits for people with pneumonia and stroke, providing up to P76,000 in coverage.

PhilHealth has declared that before the end of the year, chemotherapy for lung, liver, ovarian, and prostate cancers will also be covered. The coverage limit for breast cancer treatments will increase by 1,000%, from P100,000 to P1.4 million.