How to Get Free Medicines With PhilHealth YAKAP (Member Guide)

You get free medicines under PhilHealth YAKAP by consulting first at your chosen YAKAP clinic, receiving an electronic prescription through the doctor's GAMOT App, and then presenting a valid ID and that prescription at any accredited GAMOT pharmacy — all against a yearly benefit limit of P20,000 per member.

This is the outpatient drug benefit called GAMOT (PhilHealth Guaranteed and Accessible Medications for Outpatient Treatment), rolled out nationwide on August 21, 2025 under PhilHealth Circular No. 2025-0013. Here is how to use it, in order.

Step 1: Register With YAKAP and Pick a Clinic

You cannot skip straight to a pharmacy — GAMOT only pays out when the prescription traces back to a consultation at your chosen clinic. Before your first visit:

Make sure you have an active PhilHealth Identification Number (PIN), used to verify membership and track how much of your benefit you've used.
Register for YAKAP (Yaman ng Kalusugan Program) and choose a primary care clinic, via the eGovPH app, the PhilHealth member portal, or a PhilHealth office.
YAKAP is open to nearly every membership category — employed members, kasambahay, indigents, PWDs, self-employed and lifetime members, 4Ps beneficiaries, infants, OFWs, solo parents, seniors, and children under 21 — per the official YAKAP program page.

As of October 2025, YAKAP had more than 36 million registered beneficiaries and its network of accredited clinics already covered 92% of Philippine municipalities, so a clinic is very likely available near you. For help picking one, see What Is PhilHealth GAMOT? Free Outpatient Medicines, Explained.

Step 2: Consult First — You Cannot Get Meds Without a Visit

Free medicines under GAMOT always start with a face-to-face (or PhilHealth-recognized remote) consultation at your YAKAP clinic — there is no walk-in-to-pharmacy shortcut.

At the visit, the doctor examines you, arrives at a diagnosis coded under ICD-10, and decides which medicines to prescribe from the GAMOT list. Twenty-one of the covered molecules — including Amoxicillin, Co-amoxiclav, Metformin, Losartan, Amlodipine, Salbutamol, and Paracetamol — are the same medicines long available through Konsulta and are guaranteed to be continuously stocked at your chosen YAKAP clinic, as PhilHealth reaffirmed in a January 2026 advisory. The remaining medicines on the 75-molecule GAMOT list are claimed at a pharmacy instead. See the full breakdown in The GAMOT Medicine List: What Medicines Are Free Under YAKAP (2026).

Step 3: Get Your E-Prescription

Your prescription is not a paper slip the doctor scribbles — it is generated electronically, and that e-prescription is the actual legal basis for your free medicine.

Under PC 2025-0013, only medications prescribed through the GAMOT App by an authorized physician are covered. Every valid GAMOT prescription must show:

The date of issuance
A Unique Prescription Security Code (UPSC) generated by the app
Your name, age, sex, and address
The generic medicine name, dosage strength, form, quantity, and directions
A follow-up date, if applicable
The physician's name, signature, and PRC license number

The doctor must also give you a copy — printed from the app, a handwritten replicate, or a digital copy if your consultation was remote. Keep this copy and the UPSC; you'll need them at the pharmacy. For the mechanics behind this step, see E-Prescriptions Under GAMOT: How Doctors Prescribe Free Medicines.

There are limits on prescription size: maintenance medicines (for hypertension, diabetes, etc.) are capped at up to a 3-month supply, NSAIDs at up to 1 week, and other medicines follow DOH clinical practice guidelines.

Step 4: Claim Your Medicines at a GAMOT Pharmacy

You can claim your prescribed medicines at any accredited GAMOT facility nationwide — not only the one attached to your clinic. PC 2025-0013 states that beneficiaries can avail of GAMOT medications at any GAMOT Facility, and refusal to serve you is grounds for a PhilHealth investigation.

At the pharmacy counter:

Present a government-issued ID plus your prescription (or, for remote consultations without a physical copy, your UPSC plus ID is enough).
If someone else is claiming on your behalf, they need an authorization letter, the UPSC, and valid IDs for both themselves and you.
The pharmacist dispenses the medicine and generates a GAMOT Availment Slip (GAS) — a receipt showing what was dispensed, how much PhilHealth covered, and your remaining benefit balance for the year. You and the pharmacist both sign it.

Timing matters: antibiotics must be claimed within 2 days of the prescription date, while other medicines have up to 2 weeks. The prescription stays valid for up to 90 days from issuance, after which it's automatically cancelled in the GAMOT App. Maintenance medicines are also dispensed one month at a time — you can pick up the next month's supply starting two weeks after the last, even though the doctor may have prescribed up to three months at once.

At launch, prescriptions were available at roughly 4,300 YAKAP clinics nationwide, while GAMOT pharmacies started concentrated in Metro Manila — early examples included CGD Medical Depot in Vertis North, VidaCure branches in Alabang and Cubao, and several Generika Drugstore branches — before expanding regionally; by late September 2025, 304 pharmacies were accredited nationwide. Check current coverage in your area on PhilHealth's official list of accredited GAMOT providers.

How Much Is Covered — and What Happens After the Limit?

Each PhilHealth member gets an Annual Benefit Limit (ABL) of P20,000 for GAMOT medicines, and within that limit you pay nothing out of pocket. The ABL resets every January 1, but unused balance does not roll over — so there's no benefit to "saving" it.

Every medicine on the GAMOT list is priced against a fixed fee, not the pharmacy's regular retail price — for example, Amlodipine 10mg tablets at P6.50, Metformin 500mg at P4.75, and Paracetamol 500mg at P2.25, the same everywhere. See GAMOT Fixed Fees: How Medicine Pricing Works (PC 2025-0013 Annex A.2) for the full schedule.

If you exhaust your P20,000 for the year, the pharmacy must still charge you that same fixed fee rather than its normal retail markup (unless you specifically prefer a pricier branded version). Seniors and PWDs still get their mandatory statutory discount and VAT exemption on top of that.

What GAMOT Does Not Cover

GAMOT is an outpatient benefit, so it does not pay for medicines used during hospital confinement or outpatient emergency care, branded medicines priced above the fixed fee schedule, medicines already paid for under a different PhilHealth outpatient benefit, or any drug not on the official GAMOT list — even if it's on the broader Philippine National Formulary.

Behind the scenes, the clinics and pharmacies making this workflow run — consultation, e-prescription, dispensing — increasingly rely on EMR systems built for YAKAP end-to-end, so the doctor's diagnosis, the GAMOT App prescription, and PCU checks stay in sync without duplicate encoding.