Parties out of the appointments of health care, structural and technological renewal of hospitals, new drug policy. And, again, prevention, reorganization of primary care with 24-hour activities, revisions of some federalist principles that have widened the North-South divide, appropriateness and defensive medicine. These are the eight priorities of the health program that the Democratic Party presented yesterday in Rome, through the voice of the Pd health manager, Paul Fontanelle, and of Ignatius Marino, Amedeo Bianco And Annalisa Silvestro. The premise for everything is a strenuous defense of the national health system. "Health care is an absolute priority and cannot be placed on the same level as other chapters of public spending by the state: it must be placed on a higher level of absolute protection", underlines Paolo Fontanelli. «The current idea is that the NHS can no longer hold up with the resources available today. It was the philosophy of the Berlusconi government and its reflections were also seen in the Monti government. We radically contest this approach also basing ourselves above all on the comparison between health expenditure in Italy and in the rest of Europe. It is not true, in fact, that in Italy health expenditure is higher or excessive. These are political choices and our choice is without hesitation in defense of the national public health system". No to new cuts and new tickets, we read in the document which specifies, among other things, just as the increase in tickets, in addition to weighing heavily on household incomes, "is causing a shift of resources from the public to the private sector on many services with the effect of aggravating the budgets of the local health authorities who lose revenue without the proportional reduction of costs". The main source for finding the necessary resources is and remains general taxation. But in no way can the level of financing of the National Health Fund fall below the values established in the latest Health Pact. The document concludes as follows: «The issue of system sustainability must be tackled through a real and profound process of reorganization of the National Health Service. There are undoubtedly pockets of waste and inefficiencies to be attacked with the criterion of appropriateness, together with that of evaluation and transparency».
30 January 2013 – DoctorNews33
Marino: rationality and transparency watchwords
He has worked intensely in recent weeks on the development of the programmatic document on health of the Democratic Party. He is said to be very satisfied Ignatius Marino also because, he underlines, there is finally a clear distinction between the programs on the lists on the subject. "The PDL doesn't even have a paragraph on health care and the Berlusconi government has stood out in recent years for
