(Finance) – There is a risk of a “reduction in health services” if the resources are not found to cover a hole of over 5 billion caused by Covid expenses not covered by the state and by high bills. This is the alarm raised by the Regions yesterday during a meeting with the Ministers of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti and with the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci from whom came the promise of the activation of a table. In the future, without interventions, the Regions added, the Italian universal healthcare system will be “irreparably compromised”.
During the meeting, a 6-page document was handed out retracing the current emergencies affecting the NHS: lack of personnel, criticality of first aid and funding. “If indeed the level of funding of the NHS for the next few years will have to settle at 6% of GDP, a prospect that the regions are asking to be absolutely avoided, then it will be necessary – explains the document – to use a language of truth with citizens, so that they are recalibrated down their expectations of the NHS”. “Painful choices will be necessary, but they can no longer be postponed”, underlined the Regions.
The presidents of the Regions recalled in their document the real stress test to which the Regional Health Services were subjected in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, due to the Covid pandemic, which weighed down the budgets from an economic-financial point of view health care of the regions due to the presence of huge costs incurred to deal with the pandemic emergency which have only partially been restored by the state. 3.8 billion in expenses for the Covid emergency incurred in 2021 alone (data relating to 2022 are still missing) and 1.4 billion in expensive bills due to the increase in energy costs last year, are just some of the data listed below inside the report delivered to the Government.
The Regions then explained that the level of funding of the National Health Service for this year is not “in the slightest degree adequate to allow for the sustainability of health planning”. Hence the request for a technical table to address the main issues “which can share urgent and decisive financial and legislative interventions by and no later than the end of April 2023 through which to allow the regions not to interrupt health planning and avoid the reduction of health and social welfare services”.
Among the requests presented by the regional presidents is the sterilization of Covid expenses to be covered with a ten-year amortization plan. According to them, the Regions must then be absolutely recognized “the principle according to which no region should submit to plans for the return or reduction of services or an increase in general taxation due to the lack of recognition of the current financial criticality due to the costs relating to the emergency pandemic and energy”. “Otherwise – they underlined – the Italian universal healthcare system would be progressively and irreparably compromised”.