List of erring employers

Ian Alfredo Magno

PURSUANT to Section 6(f) of the Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the National Health Insurance Act of 2013, Philhealth is mandated to establish and maintain an updated membership and contribution database.

Relative to this, Section 15 of the same IRR provides for the Obligations of the Employer, which includes the registration of their employees, payment of contributions and the submission of remittance reports.  It must be noted therefore that employers and establishments, which have not remitted and/or have not submitted their reports on premium payments of their employees are therefore considered non-compliant.

As of  Aug. 18, 2017, Philhealth published the complete list of these nonemitting or noneporting employers in newspapers of general circulation.  Moreover, this was recently uploaded on the website on Sept. 13, 2017 via www.philhealth.gov.ph/partners/employers/NonRemitting_NonReportingEmployers.  The data has been sourced from official reports reckoned from February of this year.

Since the list was published on print, employers whose establishments were among those listed were given until the end of this week to proceed to the nearest Philhealth Local Health Insurance Office (LHIO) or Express sites or satellite desks.  By this time, they must have already settled their outstanding premium obligations and/or submitted the statutorily required reportorial requirements.

Non-compliance thereof shall render the concerned employer liable under Rule II, of Title X, particularly Sections 178 and 179 of the IRR of RA 7875 as amended, to wit:

“SECTION 178. Failure or Refusal to Register/Deduct Contributions – Any employer or officer who fails or refuses to register/deduct contributions from the employee’s compensation shall be penalized with a fine of not less than Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00) but not more than Ten Thousand Pesos (P10,000.00) multiplied by the total number of employees of the firm.

SECTION 179. Failure or Refusal to Remit Contributions – Any employer or officer authorized to collect contributions who, after collecting or deducting the monthly contributions due from the employees, fails or refuses to remit said contributions to the Corporation within thirty (30) days from the date they become due shall be punished with a fine of not less than Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00) but not more than Ten Thousand Pesos (P10,000.00) multiplied by the total number of employees of the firm.”

In this light, employers are enjoined to visit the above-indicated website or, better yet, check their own company records whether they have complied with the requirements of RA 7875 as amended.

 (Lawyer Ian Alfredo T. Magno is a legal officer at Philhealth and is a practicing lawyer based in Cagayan de Oro. E-mail: ianalfredom@gmail.com)