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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-9/hontiveros-sm.webp" alt="Risa Hontiveros" />
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(Risa Hontiveros)
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A former news reader and a protester, she became a partylist representative before being backstopped and bankrolled as senator under Aquino III.


In between, in a position requiring technical expertise, Hontiveros had to deal with complex corporate issues in an enterprise whose funds required judicious, intelligent and productive management. PhilHealth is, after all, essentially a risk management government-owned and controlled corporation with fiduciary and trust responsibilities. Essentially, it was more a financial institution requiring finely honed fiduciary skills and experience.


Imagine it as government's largest preneed insurance company specifically focused on health care and whose clients are all the citizens of the republic.


As a corporation, it must yield profits to grow a fund so large, albeit mostly dormant, so that when clients face a health crisis, it is able to partially or fully fund the need. In a nutshell, it manages the National Health Insurance Program to ensure “affordable, acceptable, available and accessible” health coverage.

As a fund, it is critical that expenditures are controlled and revenues yield enough to build retained earnings. This is critical since it is mandated to serve all citizens, while its collections are limited and its revenue sources prudently risk averse.


Thus, it needs actuarial scientists to determine and manage risks. Unfortunately, its board is often seeded with political appointees inexperienced in risk management, actuarial science and even plain vanilla corporate strategy. Hontiveros was among those lacking such specific qualifications. To her good fortune, she was among a cabal of classmates, friends and shooting buddies.


But now Hontiveros is mad. She is angry. One reason is because the chairman of the Board of Trustees of PhilHealth, with whom she shared a boardroom table and collective accountabilities, now sits across the partisan aisle. Ironically it was he who quietly oversaw questionable acts seemingly in conflict of interest where official PhilHealth expenses catalyzed her personal ambitions.


Upon appointment, a trustee must ensure a clean slate prior to sitting comfortably in a boardroom. For a corporation with a speckled past, this demands a preaudit and a baseline accounting of funds. Did Hontiveros do that? Was she derelict? Now she claims irregularities before her time.


Board trusteeship demands fiscalizing and the strict, completely selfless and prudent exercise of fiduciary responsibilities.


More important, it requires being above suspicion. This includes charges of self-serving conflicts of interest when her photos were featured on PhilHealth posters timed and distributed just prior to her campaign for a Senate seat.

PhilHealth: Is Hontiveros ranting to exact accountability, or to avoid it?