Looking into What happens if you miss your PhilHealth payment? Members who have missed/unpaid premium contributions for a maximum period of three consecutive months but have established nine (9) consecutive months of premium payments prior to the unpaid period shall be allowed to retroactively pay within one (1) month following the unpaid period.
According to a former PhilHealth official, senior members of the PhilHealth administration allegedly pocketed ₱15 billion worth of funds. Aside from the “PhilHealth mafia” reportedly receiving ill-gotten wealth from the company’s coffers, government auditing also revealed a swath of overpriced items bought by PhilHealth. Some contracts had a markup by more than 1,500 percent of the items’ original price.
With a slew of anomalous allegations once again hounding the state insurer, some of you might be thinking of skipping your PhilHealth contributions payment as a form of boycott. But what are the consequences of this? And are there legal repercussions to non-payment of your health insurance contributions?
Employers’ liability
If you’re self-employed or your current work arrangement allows you to pay your PhilHealth contributions by yourself, then non-remittance of your monthly premiums is easy. However, employed individuals will have a hard time doing this.
To understand the relationship between PhilHealth and employers, you need to understand that companies are obligated to update their list of employees.
Whenever employers take in a new member of their company, they must update their company profile by submitting an ER2 form 30 days from the time they assume office.
Once the new employee becomes enrolled under the company account, employers must make monthly remittances and they must align with the number of employees they have. After all, the law mandates that they must shoulder half of their employees’ monthly premiums.
If PhilHealth finds out that there is a mismatch in company remittances and expected amount, the state insurer can go after them and slap them with fines. Erring employers can be penalized by a minimum of ₱5,000 “multiplied by the total number of employees for failure or refusal to register or deduct PhilHealth premium contributions.”
“In the same manner, a fine of not less than ₱5,000 but not more than ₱10,000 multiplied by the total number of employees shall be applied for employers who refused or failed to remit and report contributions,” PhilHealth said in a statement.