The Elderly bill has become law: the Chamber approved it with 150 in favor and 72 abstentions, none against. The majority rejoiced, while the opposition highlighted the limits of the law.
The Chamber has given the definitive green light to the enabling law on the third age. The votes were 150 in favor (the majority parties and the Third Pole) and 72 abstentions. There was no vote against. The so-called ddl Elderly it is now law: it gives the government the task of intervening in policies for the elderly population, following precise guidelines to be implemented concretely with decrees.
What does the Elderly bill that has become law provide for?
The Elderly bill, formally called “delegated law on policies in favor of elderly people” provides for a rather broad reform that also involves some of the objectives set by the latest budget law and, as regards non self-sufficient elderly people, by the Pnrr . Precisely due to the timing of the Pnrr, the deadline for the enabling law to be adopted was the first quarter of 2023, so there was just over a week left before the deadline. The deadline for concretely implementing the reform with decrees, on the other hand, is March 2024. The text of the law, however, has set many deadlines earlier, at 31 January 2024.
The Meloni government therefore has a year to implement the changes envisaged by the law on the elderly, which are different. The foundation of the law is the idea that elderly people have the right to continue their lives and their care in the place where they live, and that the procedures for assessing whether an elderly person is self-sufficient are simplified and integrated. For this, the so-called will be born Single Access Points (Pua), places in which to carry out a multidimensional assessment to define one’s own Individualized Care Project (Pai). In practice, older people will have an easy way to be examined and establish all the health, social and assistance services they need.
What changes with the new migrant decree of the Meloni government
Solidarity cohabitation among the elderly and other measures for active ageing
An inter-ministerial committee for policies in favor of the elderly population (Cipa) will be created, which will bring together various parts of the government (ministries of Labour, Health, Family, Disability, Regional Affairs, Economy) coordinated in managing policies for the elderly. By 31 January 2024, measures must also be taken to promote “active ageing” and the social inclusion of older people, for example physical activity and relationships with pets, but also forms of supportive cohabitation between the elderly and intergenerational cohabitation, especially in family homes or solidarity condominiums. They would be spaces open to family members as well as volunteers and those who provide social and health services.
In addition, interventions of “preventive healthcare at the home of elderly people“. This should happen thanks to the “network of local pharmacies in synergy with the providers of social and health services”.
Off to the new “universal performance” on an experimental basis
The right of the elderly to receive will also be recognized home palliative care and in hospice. As far as assistance is concerned, what are currently the integrated home assistance (Adi) and the home assistance service (Sad) will be integrated.
For those who are entitled to it – the details will be defined with the decrees, they should be the same people who can take the accompanying allowance – a new subsidy is foreseen, given that the text speaks of experimenting with a “universal benefit, graduated according to the specific assistance and deliverable need in the form of money transfer and personal services“.
The centre-right is satisfied: “A new welfare is born for the elderly”
The law “radically changes the state’s approach to the elderly. The government, by modifying the text inherited from the previous executive, is moving in the direction of greater inclusion, protection and enhancement of people in the third stage of their life”. This was stated by the Deputy Minister for Labor and Social Policies Maria Teresa Bellucci, deputy of the Brothers of Italy. “A new welfare is born today where the state becomes a state that cares, avoiding isolation and loneliness through the valorisation of elderly people, even those who are not self-sufficient”.
The Third Pole also voted favourably. The congresswoman Elena Bonetti he commented: “The text that we are preparing to vote on is in fact the same one that we passed as the last act of the Draghi government. The current executive has limited itself to shuffling the cards to pretend a discontinuity. The result has been some corrective, pejorative We will vote in favor of this even if the government should have taken the commitment on the coverage, in order not to leave room for uncertainty on its real implementation”, he concluded.
Pd and M5s abstain but protest: “There are no resources, the majority has not listened to us”
Ilenia Malavasi, a member of the Democratic Party, underlined that the law “comes from a proposal approved by the Draghi government and with the fundamental contribution of ministers Speranza and Orlando”. It is a “law of civility and maturity”, because it is important “to ensure that the frail condition of the elderly is taken on board in a more general framework of rules to protect all those who are in a condition of non-self-sufficiency that affects millions of people”.
There are limits, however, for Malavasi: “This bill lacks a definition of the audience of people we are addressing, lack of resources (a reform of this type cannot be done with unchanged resources), there is a lack of recognition of the figure of the caregiver, there is a lack of recognition of care work and the value of care, there is a lack of clear criteria for the accreditation of public and private subjects, third including the sector, which provide home care and assistance services, there is a lack of a definition of the essential levels of services”.
Also abstained 5 star movement: “The attitude of the majority is very worrying”, wrote the M5 deputies in a note. It is “a bill born in the last legislature, at the end of a long transversal work. In a few months of Meloni’s government, however, that spirit of collaboration has already become a faded memory”. The majority, in fact, “rejected all the proposals we have made to improve the text, including the valorisation of active aging with the creation of an ad hoc fund, the protection of caregivers, the qualification of OSSs, the implementation of plans for independent and self-determined living”. This is “a serious compression of the role that belongs to Parliament and of the work that has been done”.