In the name of the right of workers and poor Filipinos to affordable healthcare services, the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) condemns the government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr for removing any subsidy to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation or PhilHealth in the approved 2025 national budget.

First, the Universal Health Care Act mandates that PhilHealth’s reserve funds should not be transferred to purposes other than those of the government-owned health insurance corporation. Second, so many Filipinos still need PhilHealth coverage so the reserve funds should be spent on expanding this coverage.

The truth is that the politicians, the congressmen and senators, who defunded PhilHealth know that Filipinos badly need financial assistance to meet their health and hospitalization needs. They just don’t want such assistance to pass through PhilHealth but through them – through their pork barrel funds.

In defunding PhilHealth, the country’s politicians are again prioritizing their self-interest – for patronage that enables them to win elections and maintain power. They are, as usual, prioritizing their self-interest to the detriment of the Filipino workers and people whose right to affordable health services is jeopardized as they have to ask politicians for the support that rightfully belongs to them.

So much is wrong, anti-worker and anti-people in the 2025 budget. Allocations for the Health and Education departments were reduced, while those for the Department of Public Works and Highways, known for pork barrel allocations and plain corruption, were increased. Marcos Jr’s huge PhP 4.5 billion confidential funds were maintained while his office received an additonal PhP 5.4 billion.

The budget of the Department of National Defense was increased by PhP 8.857 billion, while the “barangay development program” of the notorious National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) received PhP 4.320 billion. Marcos Jr ordered an increase in soldiers’ subsistence allowance from PhP 150 to P350 a day, or from PhP 4,500 to PhP 10,500 per month.

Confidential funds increased by a record PhP 6.149 trillion while the questionable Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP), recognized by many as another form of pork barrel funds, received PhP 26 billion.

Marcos Jr has always wanted to rebrand the disgraced Marcos family name. With his government’s actions on the 2025 national budget, he is continuing his father’s legacy of patronage politics and corruption. The Noynoy Aquino government, in contrast, showed that it tried to curb pork barrel funds and corruption in government.