(Finance) – Today, on the occasion of World Mental Health Day, was presented, by GIMBE FoundationThe 6th Report on the National Health Service. As underlined by president Nino Cartabellotta a worrying picture emerges. “The founding principles of the NHS, universality, equality, equity, have been betrayed. Today there are very different key words that define a NHS that is now at its end and affect the daily lives of people, in particular of the less well-off socio-economic groups: interminable waiting times, crowding of emergency rooms, inability to find a family doctor or pediatrician near home, unacceptable regional and local inequalities leading to healthcare migration, increase in private spending leading to the impoverishment of families and the renunciation of treatment“.
“This is why, almost 45 years after the law establishing the SSN lhe GIMBE Foundation calls for a social and political pact which, regardless of party ideologies and changes in governments, relaunches that model of fair and universal public health, a pillar of our democracy, an indispensable social achievement and a great lever for the economic development of the country. The worrying “state of health” of the NHS requires profound political reflection”, concludes Cartabellotta.
Data from the 6th Report on the National Health Service
The national health needs from 2010 to 2023 it increased overall by 23.3 billion euroson average 1.94 billion per year, but with very different trends between the pre-pandemic (2010-2019), pandemic (2020-2022) and post-pandemic (2023) periods, on which “it is appropriate to clarify again – he commented Cartabellotta – to document that all the governments that have followed one another in the last 15 years have cut and/or not invested adequately in healthcare”.
There total health expenditure for the 2022 is equal to €171,867 million of which €130,364 million of public spending (75.9%), 36,835 million of out-of-pocket spending (21.4%), i.e. paid by families and 4,668 million of spending intermediated by health funds and insurance companies (2.7%). Our country’s public health spending in 2022 stands at 6.8% of GDP, 0.3 percentage points below both the OECD average (7.1%) and the European average (7.1%). The gap with the average of the European countries in the OECD area is 873 dollars per capita (873 dollars, equal to 829 euros) which, taking into account an ISTAT resident population as of 1 January 2023 of over 58.8 million inhabitants , for the year 2022 corresponds to a gap of almost 51.4 billion dollars, equal to 48.8 billion euros.
“If it is certain that the PNRR Health Mission represents a great opportunity to strengthen the NHS – underlined Cartabellotta – its implementation must be supported by political actions. The GIMBE Foundation has always reiterated that, if on the one hand there is no hidden plan for the dismantling and privatization of the NHS, on the other hand there is no explicit political program for its strengthening. In order to guide political decisions, the Report contains the National Health Service Relaunch Plan, aimed at implementing breakthrough reforms and innovations for the definitive relaunch of a founding pillar of our democracy”.