{"id":8287,"date":"2016-10-04T10:17:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T02:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/?p=8287"},"modified":"2016-10-04T16:53:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T08:53:13","slug":"house-bill-filed-for-sss-to-speed-up-payment-of-members-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/2016\/10\/04\/house-bill-filed-for-sss-to-speed-up-payment-of-members-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"House bill filed for SSS to speed up payment of members\u2019 claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Quezon City 2nd district Representative Winston \u201cWinnie\u201d Castelo, who chairs the House Committee on Metro Manila Development, filed House Bill (HB) No.3544 or the \u201cExpeditious Payment of SSS Benefits Act of 2016,\u201d which mandates the Social Security System (SSS) to speed up the processing and payment of claims of legitimate claimants and beneficiaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-8288 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/10\/sss-logo-medium.png\" alt=\"sss-logo-medium\" width=\"518\" height=\"268\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Image grabbed from this website <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/pesosandsense.com\/usapang-social-security-system-sss-part-1\/\"><em>pesosandsense.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Once approved, the bill will require SSS to pay its members their retirement, maternity, sickness, disability, death, and funeral benefits, as well as loans, within a month or 30 days from the day the application and complete requirements are filed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">According to the Civil Service Commission (CSC), the SSS continues to tally the highest number of complaints in the President&#8217;s Hotline 8888 from August 1 to 24. Most complaints are regarding the slow pace of transactions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">\u201cSSS members who come to us for assistance complain that it would take three to six months for their claims to be paid out,\u201d said Castelo, chairman of the Metro Manila Development Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The proposed law also mandates the SSS to issue and promulgate stricter and more simplified rules, regulations, mechanics, and guidelines to expedite the processing and payment of all claims so that the benefits can immediately by enjoyed by SSS members and their beneficiaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">In the Explanatory Note, Castelo noted that SSS members and beneficiaries often \u201csuffer the brunt of a rather tedious, difficult, and delayed processing\u201d of their claims, preventing them from enjoying the benefits due them at the time they are needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">However, the SSS has acknowledged the delay in the payment of claims in the past. It also promised to adopt measures to significantly reduce the time required to process them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Last year, the state pension fund adopted a five-year program to cut down the processing of retirement benefits which on average took 39 days, death benefits which took 62 days, disability claims which took 31 days, employees\u2019 compensation which took 49.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The Commission on Audit (CoA) has also taken the SSS to task for the delay, noting in a\u00a0 2014 audit report that it deprived the members of their benefits at the time most needed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The CoA noted that an evaluation of sample benefit payments processed at three SSS branches in the National Capital Region showed that \u201cthe processing time from filing date to check date (approval of payment) ranged from at least two months to as high as six months.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The audit report said out of 1,030 sample paid claims from January to December 2014, 649 had a processing time of two months, 255 had three months, 94 had four months, 30 had five months, and 2 had six months.\u00a0 Most of these were retirement claims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">The audit also showed that out of the 9,614 claims pending at the three centers as of December 31, 2014, 2,344 claims were for evaluation, 2,612 were returned\/rejected by the processors, 319 required additional documents, 3,845 were for proof list review, and 494 were returned by reviewers to processors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mb.com.ph\/house-bill-filed-to-expedite-sss-services\/%23bpSPdeDrHFwbJcTR.99\">mb.com.ph<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journal.com.ph\/news\/nation\/solon-wants-sss-to-speed-up-payment-of-members-claims\">journal.com.ph<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quezon City 2nd district Representative Winston \u201cWinnie\u201d Castelo, who chairs the House Committee on Metro Manila Development, filed House Bill (HB) No.3544 or the \u201cExpeditious Payment of SSS Benefits Act of 2016,\u201d which mandates the Social Security System (SSS) to speed up the processing and payment of claims of legitimate claimants and beneficiaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[182,181,180,179,183],"class_list":["post-8287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-current-events","tag-expeditious-payment-of-sss-benefits-act-of-2016","tag-house-bill-no-3544","tag-social-security-system","tag-sss","tag-winston-castelo"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/10\/sss-logo-medium-e1475571124581.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8290,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287\/revisions\/8290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}