2024-04-16 21:59:20
(ANSA) – ROME, APRIL 16 – A decrease of over 3.6 billion in 2023 compared to the previous year, followed by an increase of 7.6 billion in 2024, which however “is only illusory, as it is largely partly due to the fact that the renewal of the contracts of managers and contractors for the three-year period 2019-2021 was not completed, the costs of which were not recorded in 2023 and were postponed to 2024”. It is the Gimbe Foundation, with its president Nino Cartabellotta, who carries out an independent analysis of the data on health spending contained in the 2024 Economic and Financial Document, which, in addition to the 2023 final budget, also includes the estimates for 2024 and for the three-year period 2025-2027. “Compared to the health spending forecasts up to 2027 – states Cartabellotta – the Def 2024 attests to the lack of a change of course and ignores the terrible ‘state of health’ of the National Health Service (SSN), whose fundamental principles of universality, equity and justice have been betrayed, with consequences on people’s lives, especially the weakest socio-economic groups and the populations of Southern Italy, from very long waiting times to unacceptable overcrowding in emergency rooms; from regional and local inequalities in the provision of services to the migration of healthcare from the South to the North; from the increase in private spending to the impoverishment of families and the renunciation of treatment”. If the Def certifies a health expenditure/GDP ratio of 6.3% in 2023 (compared to 6.7% in 2022) and a health expenditure of 131 billion in absolute terms (over 3.6 billion less than in 2022), in 2024 the health expenditure/GDP ratio rises to 6.4% in 2024 compared to 6.3% in 2023; in absolute terms, healthcare spending is expected to be over 138.7 billion, i.e. 7.6 billion more than in 2023 (+5.8%). The latter is a fact which, however, Cartabellotta notes, is only ‘illusory’. (HANDLE).
2024-04-16 21:59:20