OFW Insurance: What OWWA Pays, With the Amounts

OWWA does not use the word insurance for most of this, but the effect is insurance: a USD $25.00 contribution buys cover with published peso amounts against death, disability and catastrophic illness. Here is the whole schedule in one place.

The published amounts

An accidental death claim therefore pays ₱220,000.00 in total once the burial gratuity is added, and a natural-causes claim ₱120,000.00.

What the cover costs, in proportion

The contribution is a flat USD $25.00 covering a window that runs to the end of your contract or 2 years, whichever comes first.

This page does not convert USD 25 into pesos, because OWWA does not publish the rate it applies and the exchange rate moves.

Death and burial, in detail

The death benefit is described by OWWA as an insurance benefit to survivors of deceased OFWs who were active OWWA members at the time of death. The qualifying words are “active” and “at the time of death”, and they are the whole reason renewal matters more than most members realise.

Disability, in detail

Note what the ranges do not tell you. A partial disability could pay ₱2,500.00 or ten times that at ₱25,000.00, and OWWA does not publish the schedule that decides which. That is a real gap, and this guide does not fill it with a guess.

MEDPLUS, and what sits behind it

MEDPLUS is OWWA’s Supplementary Medical Assistance. It aims to give OFW members afflicted with a dreaded disease relief on hospital and medical bills by sharing the medical cost at a level equivalent to the PhilHealth case rate benefits but not exceeding ₱50,000 per OFW-member. It is open to the member or qualified dependents.

The word “supplementary” is doing work there: MEDPLUS tops up PhilHealth rather than replacing it, and the ceiling is per member.

Where an illness falls outside MEDPLUS, the Welfare Assistance Program is the backstop. WAP extends cash relief to OWWA members, active or non-active, and their families, at the jobsite or in-country, in four circumstances:

• Calamity assistance for members and families affected by natural calamities or disasters such as super typhoons, earthquakes and heavy flooding
• Bereavement assistance
• Disability assistance for members who were victims of crimes or accidents
• Medical assistance for members with illnesses not covered under MEDPLUS

OWWA does not publish WAP amounts on the pages read for this guide, so none are stated here.

What every claim starts with

Across the social benefit services, two items appear at the top of every checklist.

Each benefit then adds its own documents. All three of the death, disability and MEDPLUS services are classified Highly Technical and run Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, out of the Social Benefits Unit of a Regional Welfare Office’s Program Services Division.

Coming home: the livelihood ladder

Not insurance, but part of the same membership, and worth knowing because it is the one benefit where being current pays four times over.

BPBH also includes entrepreneurship development training alongside the cash.

What this page does not cover

OWWA does not publish, in the sources read for this page, the schedule that grades a partial disability inside its ₱2,500.00 to ₱25,000.00 range or a total disability inside its ₱50,000.00 to ₱100,000.00 range, the definition of a “dreaded disease” for MEDPLUS, the Welfare Assistance Program amounts, claim processing times, or any prescriptive period for filing. None of those are stated here.

This page also does not cover the compulsory insurance a licensed recruitment agency carries for an agency-hired worker, or any private policy. Those are separate from OWWA membership.

Related

The OWWA membership guide covers the USD $25.00 contribution and the 2-year validity that gates all of this. The OWWA scholarship guide covers the education benefits, and the PDOS guide covers the mandatory seminar before departure.

• All OWWA guides
• Calculators
• How figures on this site are sourced