Senator Alan Peter Cayetano on Thursday criticized the Department of Health (DOH) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) for what he described as misleading branding of the No Balance Billing (NBB) policy, saying the term does not reflect the actual experience of many patients in public hospitals. During the Senate plenary debates on the proposed 2026 DOH budget, Cayetano raised concerns over inconsistencies between the NBB policy’s name and its implementation. “It’s not ‘no balance.’ Isn’t that false advertising?” he asked Senator Pia Cayetano, the sponsor of the health department’s budget. He said confusion among local officials and the public has grown following President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address, which many understood as a commitment to universal zero billing in public hospitals. The Senate later suspended its plenary rules to allow Health Secretary Ted Herbosa to respond directly to the senator’s questions. Herbosa clarified that Zero Balance Billing applies only to patients admitted to basic wards of DOH-retained hospitals. The NBB policy, meanwhile, covers only indigent patients and only within PhilHealth’s case rate limits, fixed reimbursement amounts for specific illnesses or procedures, which often do not match actual hospital expenses. Cayetano warned that the gap between the program’s name and its actual implementation undermines public trust. He also faulted PhilHealth for not updating its case rate packages since 2017, saying outdated amounts make it impossible for the NBB policy to function as intended. While PhilHealth has recently increased most case rate packages to 80 percent, Cayetano said many procedures remain inadequately funded, leaving patients to cover the difference. “Garbage in is garbage out… We cannot really tell people na we will zero bill you without accurate costing,” he said. “We cannot promise people then not deliver.” Cayetano urged the government to stop issuing announcements that raise unrealistic expectations about healthcare services. “We cannot keep announcing programs that confuse the public and fail them in practice. Either they really do no balance or they change the name,” he said.
