With the fear of COVID-19 comes the fear of unaffordable hospital bills. There have been reports of moderate cases of COVID-19 costing more than P1 million in hospital bills, with severe cases reportedly costing up to P3.8 million.
Hexilon Alvarez, whose parents were both infected with COVID-19, revealed that the hospital bills of his mother, Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, and father, late senator Heherson Alvarez, amounted to more than P8 million.
While PhilHealth has extended its help, government insurance can only go so far as the maximum benefit Filipinos can avail for is P789,384, which still might not be enough to cover all the exorbitant fees. And not all private insurance companies have the capacity to cover the full amount.
However, one insurance company, Cocolife, is providing full coverage for all COVID-19-related hospitalizations of health card members.
Cocolife, which claims to be the biggest Filipino-owned stock life insurance company, will continue to cover 100 percent of COVID-19-related hospital bills of members, and those with insurance policies affixed with hospitalization benefit and hospitalization benefit rider plus will receive a daily hospital income for the days spent in confinement.
Cocolife also recently donated P1 million to the University of the Philippines Manila for the purchase of a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) machine to aid the testing capacity of the country.
