In Italy, despite spending 26.1% less on health care than in countries such as France and Germany, all regions are starting to end 2012 with a deficit due to health care. To this must be added the data, made known by Censis, according to which in the last year 9 million Italians totally or partially gave up treatment for economic reasons. To say it is Walter Ricciardi, director of the National Observatory on Health in the Italian Regions of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome, on the occasion of the presentation of the Country Report! Italy 2013, study document and analysis of the state of health of Italians, conducted in collaboration with the Association of Parliamentary and legislative initiative for Health. What has emerged, among other things, is that in the face of an increased demand for health from an aging population, over 20% of Italians are over 65 years old, health expenditure, even among the lowest in Europe , grows at a faster rate than GDP. "In the last 10 years," he underlined Antonio Tomassini, chairman of the Senate Health Commission «public health expenditure has grown overall by 61.8 billion euros, going from 51.7 billion to the current 113.5 billion, and if we consider the private component, it reaches 144 billion euros, increasing faster than economic growth, which is extremely limited in our country, and the Regions go into the red precisely because of health care ». The document, designed to be a working tool for operators and policy makers, has highlighted a population with needs to which the Health Service does not provide adequate answers: the 90% of cardio and cerebrovascular events has known environmental causes that can be eliminated and modified, a third of heart attack patients arrive too late in the hospital and therefore are not treated with reperfusion therapy, diagnostic and therapeutic resources for ischemic heart disease are used less effectively for women than for men, smokers over 14 years of age are stuck on 23%, in the North we get more ill with cancer but we heal more. All this against a progressive and marked increase in life expectancy: 10.3% of Italians are between 65 and 74 years old and another 10% are over 75, in particular women. The situation, the report notes, should be resolved with greater coordination of national and local policies, activities! à of prevention and health education as well as an adaptation of services to the demand for assistance. (SZ)
February 7, 2013 – DoctorNews33
Italian healthcare plummets to 21st place in terms of quality. At 26th for "prevention and equity"
