“At a financial level, vaccines must be treated as weapons that free resources”

2023-06-20 14:36:00

“Being able to define expenditure for vaccinations not as ‘current’ but as ‘investment’, which is the same way we use to account for the disbursement for armaments, would allow freeing up resources on the income statement of the National Health Service and on the income statement of the state”. This was explained by Americo Cicchetti, professor of Business Organization at the Faculty of Economics of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome on the sidelines of the presentation, today in Rome, of the Consensus paper of Italia Longeva, the national association for aging and longevity active, for a greater diffusion of the anti-pneumococcal vaccination on the national territory.

A possibility, that of another type of accounting for vaccines, which “is not possible today. European rules consider arms costs as depreciable over time but the same cannot be done with health care costs. The paradox is that the bullet, which is fired only once, is amortized in 10 years while the vaccine, which has effects over time, is not”. However, there is the possibility of reversing the trend, “there are two paths – continues Cicchetti – the first is the main one, that is to change the accounting system of European public expenditure for all the countries of the Union. Many states are asking to make this update. The last time it happened in 2010 when, in fact, military expenditure was included as investment expenditure. Today there is one more reason to update because, in addition to vaccines, there are also gene therapies which may have suitable characteristics”.

The second path “is the one that comes from the revision of the Stability and Growth Pact. Net primary public expenditure must be ‘agreed’ with the European Commission to be within the parameters (3% of the GDP deficit ratio) and this would allow for the deduction of some expenses: certainly those for the interest we pay on the debt, but also expenses that can generate effects from the point of view of economic growth.If we manage to demonstrate, and it is not difficult, that there is actually more growth with a population healthier thanks to the vaccination of adults, this would allow us to shift that expenditure from ‘current’ to ‘investment’, lightening our income statement, i.e. the one we present to the European Commission. provides for an extension to 4 or 7 years of this plan – which was once negotiated year on year – this leaves room for maneuvers of this type”.