Long live the CGIL which, taking to the streets against the right-wing government, defends the right to health and the public health service.
For a long time the right to health (art 32) also due to counter health reforms made in the past, has in fact lost the adjective “fundamental” becoming, at the expense of the whole country, a potestative right that is a very flexible adaptable right interpretable that allows all those involved in health to have more freedom than constraints.
Today the demonstration of the CGIL tells us that the right to health is a fundamental right that must once again be fundamental. The economy in general, but also healthcare companies, are not allowed to interpret it in order to make it compatible with needs other than those of health. That is, health yesterday as today is not negotiable because the right to health is not negotiable. If this were the case then it would mean that justice, the form of our social coexistence, the degree of civilization of a country, the quality of the air we breathe, etc. would be negotiable.
Today health must not be compatible with the economy but must be compossible with it. Today it is no longer a question of adapting people’s fundamental rights to the needs of profit but of removing all the contradictions that exist between health and the economy. Compossibility instead of compatibility means removing the contradictions that deny the coexistence between economy and health. Today the economy must produce economic wealth without harming the right to health, therefore without compromising the living and working environment. The economy cannot be granted the freedom to deny people’s right to health.
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But the demonstration of the CGIL it also tells us two other things: the first is that the right to health is not only a fundamental right but it is also a “meta-value” that is, by its nature it necessarily implies the citizen’s right to change everything that harms ex ante his Health. That is, the right to emancipate oneself from any disadvantage. Meta-value means “going beyond” anything that hinders or denies the right to health. For this we need adequate environmental policies, new health policies, new organizations in public services, new cultural approaches, etc…
The second thing the CGIL demonstration tells us is that today with regard to health we need to update the definitions. It is no longer enough to say that “health is not a commodity” above all it is necessary to say that health is a special wealth which, like economic wealth, makes the country grow and its economy grow. If health is a wealth then, the government must change its health policies because they as a whole risk impoverishing the country precisely by affecting people’s health needs. Today the prevention envisaged by the laws is as if dead and the diseases are growing and with them both the health care expenditure to cure them and the speculation that expands its market through the private sector.
Finally, the demonstration by the CGIL raised not only the major issues of health and safety but also the major current political issues concerning public health, including the proposal by the League and the government on differentiated autonomy. Proposal simply unacceptable because it is subversive.
The government on healthcare instead remove the great and ancient contradictions concerning the question of sustainability, has simply decided to definance public health by declaring in fact that public health is a priori unsustainable and that the only way left to go is its privatisation. That is the neoliberal solution. A completely unfounded axiom because public health is more sustainable than ever, and because it is possible to free it from the many diseconomies and therefore reform it radically. The problem that the government does not want to address, perhaps so as not to tread on the corns of certain interests, is the spending reform health history. A reform that is necessary first of all to free up resources and to spend those that exist better. But it makes no sense for the government to refuse to adequately fund health care. What cannot be refinanced are its diseconomies and its gross contradictions and its harmful counter-reforms.
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Today part of the sustainability problems of public health also derive from the imbalance between public health and private health and above all from a fiscal policy that has deliberately favored the private sector to the detriment of the public
The demonstration by the CGIL rightly asks to refinance healthcare but to refinance healthcare we need to put things back in place as envisaged by the 1978 healthcare reform, therefore before the counter-reforms of the 1990s.
The real problem is not integrating the public with the private as all propose but to reaffirm the sovereign role of the public recognizing the private a role of pure auxiliary. The use of the private sector is not under discussion but as Article 46 of 833 says, whoever wants it has to pay for it, i.e. he cannot get it paid by the state or by someone else
The right to health cannot be guaranteed with a multi-leg system. But with a strong public service to which to recognize an unequivocal monopolistic function in terms of care and assistance. Because in the end only the public service is the true guarantor of the right to health.