Out-of-pocket (OOP) expense for healthcare among Filipino will remain a major problem for years to come, according to insurance executives at AXA.
AXA’s visiting global chief executive officer Thomas Buberl noted that only half of what Filipinos spend each year for healthcare services is paid for by government under the Universal Healthcare Act, forcing most to dip into their pockets and pay up an aggregate P453.23 billion in 2021 alone.
Based on data at the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), this much money equaled 41.5 percent of healthcare expenses among Filipino that year, an expense that has trended lower from 52.4 percent in 2014 to data available in 2021.
Buberl explained that while the downtrend is encouraging, the high-risk, low-insurance spending culture makes Filipinos “highly vulnerable to financial losses in the face of life’s uncertainties.”
“At AXA, we firmly believe that while life is full of risks – the future shouldn’t be one of them,” he said.
He noted that insurance provides a financial safety net ensuring that a crisis such as death of severe illness of a breadwinner and the destruction or theft of a property does not spiral into financial ruin.
In the Philippines where insurance penetration is lower than 2 percent of GDP and certainly below the global average of 7.3 percent makes the average Filipino poorly prepared for a health crisis and susceptible to financial ruin, the executive said.
