by Claudio Maria Maffei
17 OTT –
Dear Director,
that public health is a fundamental social safety net, the ANAO recalled exactly ten years ago when it stated that it was its intention to “save the National Health Service to take charge of the defense of a public and national system, of its function of social cohesion and guarantor of the enforceability of the right to health, which is one and indivisible, and cannot be declined on the basis of the postal code. “
Things have not improved since then, but somehow our health system held up until the start of the pandemic. I believe that the (at the time comforting) data of the two Figures taken from Health at a glance 2021 should be carefully examined.
The first shows a graph showing the total life expectancy at birth (2019 data) and by sex in the various countries. Italy is in the very first places.
Figure 1 – Life expectancy at birth in OECD countries (2019 or nearest year data)
Figure 2 instead shows the difference in life expectancy at 30 years in the two sexes between the highest and lowest educational level. Italy is the country that had the lowest difference in the 2016-2019 four-year period. These are the effects – while it lasts – of having a National Health Service, however shaky for too many years.
Figure 2 – Differential in life expectancy at 30 between men and women in OECD countries (four-year period 2016-2019 in the case of Italy and the majority of countries)
Now the choice of the Minister of Health must be seen in the light of this post-pandemic crisis situation (if we can speak of a post) whose main symptoms are (but they are not the only ones) the crisis of the Emergency Department, the lengthening of waiting times and the flight of private professionals.
A few days ago here on QS, Colleague Panti reasoned, as always in a stimulating way, on the possible new Minister of Health, recalling that “many who care about the Health Service (perhaps regardless of how they voted) hope that the Minister of Health belongs to the so-called social right, in short, is Melonian, to avoid the dangerous Northern League regionalism or the tendency to privatization prevalent in Forza Italia. An analysis that appears correct to the extent that the statist and anti-liberal vision of socialism linked to sovereignism can still lead to useful outcomes to guarantee the survival of the health system as designed by the 833.”
Intelligent and shareable affirmation which, however, must be compared – in my opinion – with the fact that where it is already governing (the Marches), the Melonian social right in terms of health has proved to be highly inadequate, as I have already had the opportunity to remember.
In his analysis, then, my colleague Panti did not keep in mind that in addition to coming from the three right (social, sovereign and “as private as possible”), the new Minister could be a “covidologist” technician, that is, a technician who emerged or re-emerged to the honors news during the pandemic.
Another risky option because the type of emergency that the National Health Service has to face goes far beyond Covid and requires an approach that is capable of taking on an overall crisis in which the most different issues from those relating to the politics of health are intertwined. personnel to those relating to the (re) programming of territorial and hospital networks.
The bailout (which is what we are talking about) of the National Health Service requires an unprecedented alliance between politics, citizens, social forces and operators. Basically, it is better to have a Minister of Health who is not an expression of the most predictable and obvious rites of politics.
The loss of the National Health Service, one of the greatest social safety nets we have, deserves courage and imagination in choosing the new Minister.
Claudio Maria Maffei
October 17, 2022
© All rights reserved
Other articles in Letters to the editor
