Download Executive Summary

Executive Summary
The results of the 2005 PNHA reveal the following:

Total health expenditure up by 9.4 percent in 2005
The total health expenditure in the country went up by 9.4 percent in 2005, from P165.3
billion in 2004 to P180.8 billion in 2005. This could largely be attributed to the increase in
health benefit payments from social insurance, such as the Employees’ Compensation and
the PhilHealth. Compared with the previous year, the growth in 2005 was slower than the
11.9 percent increase in 2004.

Per capita health spending increases
With the total health expenditure growing faster than the population, per capita health
spending went up by P142, from P1,978 in 2004 to P2,120 in 2005 or a 7.2 percent
increase.

Share of health expenditure to GDP goes down
The share of health expenditure to GDP was lower at 3.3 percent in 2005 compared to
previous year’s 3.4 percent. It is still below the 5 percent standard set by the World Health
Organization (WHO) for developing countries. On the other hand, the share of health
expenditure to GNP remained at 3.1 percent which is within the National Objectives for
Health (NOH) target of 3-4 percent.

Health benefit payments from social insurance exhibit the highest growth
Health benefit payments from social insurance showed the highest growth rate at 24.9
percent or a P4.0 billion increase in 2005. This resulted from the big hike in payments from
Employees' Compensation at 42.4 percent and PhilHealth at 24.4 percent.

Government health spending remains far from the HSRA target
The share of government on health expenditure declined to 29 percent which is below the
target of 40 percent based on the Health Sector Reform Agenda (HSRA). Also, the
government's target to depend less on out-of-pocket payments and provide more social
health insurance is still far from being realized as the share of out-of-pocket payments even
increased to 49 percent while the share of social insurance payments increased only slightly
to 11 percent in 2005. Based on the HSRA, the target for out-of-pocket is 20 percent while
the target for social insurance is 30 percent.