Strategic Management

“Sin Taxes” and Health

Financing in the Philippines–
Case Study
Case Outline
• Case Questions
• Conclusion
• Recommendation
 Case Questions
• Did the government achieve its goal in
increasing revenue through sin tax reform law??
• Could the initial decline in smoking be sustained
long-term?
• Could the new revenues have the impact on the
national health that he hoped?
• Had the health system policy changes and
investments he had chosen to leverage the
increasing tax revenues been the right ones?
• Could those changes be sustained under new
leadership?
Conclusion
• The government achieve its goal to generate
revenue, it is shown on the Exhibit that there are
increased on Total Excise Tax Collection as:
• 2012 – 32.9 (PhP billions)
• 2013 – 100.92 (PhP billions)
• 2014 – 111.62 (PhP billions)
Conclusion
• The primary goal of the law was to improved the public
health by declining the numbers of smoking prevalence.
Based on the data below it is sustainable as it shows that
reduction in smoking was largely the result of fewer
Filipinos starting the habit.
Smoking Prevalence In smoking prevalence
National Nutrition Survey reduction, it is also
important to focus on
2008 2013
reduction or eliminating
aged 20 or older 31% 25.40% the means for the people
National Poll to start smoking.
2012 2014 PhilHealth include
aged 18 or older 29% 26% smoking cessation
counseling on its primary
aged 18 to 24 35% 18%
package coverage.
Lowest Income quintile 38% 25%
Conclusion
• One of the health policy changes is expanding
the coverage of PhilHealth. The DOH will now
subsidize the Sponsored Program families of
PhilHealth. This eliminate the problem of denial
of coverage to the real poor families as previous
qualification of the program was under LGU
which do not have standard eligibility criteria.
The newly gained revenues had finance this
expansion program.
Conclusion
• Health infrastructure enhancement is the other
program to be funded from the sin tax revenue.
• The goal is to modernize the barangay health
centers and rural health units to become “poly
clinics” which would support universal health
care.
• The HFEP (Health Facilities Enhancement
Program) is the named of the program for the
health infra enhancement.
Recommendation
PhilHealth Low Utilization
• The expansion of PhilHealth coverage was rooted
due to the reported 83.6% household out of the
pocket spending for private health. There’s a need
to reduce this number, but as per report
suggested, there’s a low utilization for PhilHealth
which still leads on the out-of-the pocket spending
to be high.
• PhilHealth will need now to have an aggressive
campaign awareness on the benefits of the
program.
• DOH will focus on increasing the accredited
providers.
Recommendation
Infrastructure enhancement low impact to the
improvement of health facilities.
• PhilHealth will expand the coverage for more people
but the DOH should need now to double speed on
improving the health facilities that will serve as the
PhilHealth accredited providers.
• DOH should now establish and cope up its program
processes on the other laws like the procurement law
to avoid any delay of the program execution.
• DOH to help the local government (health units) to
utilize the budget allotted to them, as efficiency on
budget spending will be needed for the people to
access better services. Efficient use of budget will be
another sign for them to receive more budget which
will result more upgraded health services.
End.
“Sin Taxes” and Health
Financing in the Philippines