Health & Wellness Best Posts in Thread: Philhealth Cost

Until a few years ago, a married foreigner could be covered under his wife's Philhealth Insurance. Of course that is no longer allowed, so now I pay PHP 17K annually and my wife and boy are covered under my plan. Today my boy had to see his doctor and was given a pain injection. Siliman total outpatient cost was PHP 9,300. Surprisingly, Philhealth covered all of it.!

 

Sadly, health insurance, or rather substantial lack thereof, is one of the downsides of living in the Philippines as a retiree from most western countries. However, that doesn't put us in a material different situation as almost all of the locals.
My personal attitude is that I won't cripple myself financially by getting a crazy expensive Pacific Cross policy, which will likely hide behind pre-existing condition arguments when push comes to shove anyway. Rather than paying half my income in insurance premiums I'll pay health expenses out of pocket (Philhealth doesn't make more than a minor dent in most bills anyway).
In the situation where I may need very expensive major surgery that I can't afford then I'll either travel to the Netherlands and get it done there after re-registering for insurance, or, if I can't travel anymore, I'll do the same as the locals, I'll die.

 

You also need to consider whether an airline will accept you for travel if your fitness to travel is in question - as a "catastrophic issue" would probably be noticeable. Just a thought Pat O

 

I will renew again. The payback is not fantastic unless you have something very expensive done, but, on balance, I think it's worth having the coverage.

 

I've had frozen shoulder in both shoulders and had cortisone in both shoulders. I think I had two shots in one shoulder over time. Eventually the frozen shoulder resolved itself. It's hard to know if the cortisone sped up the healing process or just made it more tolerable as it healed itself. It didn't immediately resolve after the shots, but they did make it feel better.

 

That's great! In the past (several years ago) the patient needed to be confined to get anything out of PhilHealth.