Healthcare is an ATM: for the simple reason that it is the only truly known public expenditure. The same cannot be said of other sectors of public spending, from personnel to consultancy, to municipal companies and everything around them". This was stated by Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin, speaking on Radio 1.
"I am very clear - adds the minister - in recent years the money in health care has not been well spent. If we want to change things, give us the tools, we will agree them with the Regions.
If this cannot be done, because there is no agreement, no concrete quantification, everything will have to be rethought and at that point bloodier measures are also justified, given that now everyone is making sacrifices. But linear cuts hurt people."
On the Health Pact, Minister Lorenzin said: "I am working hard, I would say ferociously, in the relationship with the Regions because everyone must assume their own responsibilities, to close this agreement, with safeguards within the framework, which bind Government and Regions to the agreements made, even with substitute powers. If we do this, we do something that has never been done in previous years. If the Pact is skipped, we miss the place where structural reforms of the system can be defined, and we will return to the cuts, which will then lead to a social crisis that we still struggle to face today.
We - adds Lorenzin - say that people should stay as little as possible in the hospital and more in the area, an operation that would lead to considerable savings in money, other than a billion, we would have enormous savings. But to do that you need to have the resources to invest in the area and the time to monitor the implementation of the reform. If you don't do this, you can recover 500 million today but lose 4-5 billion tomorrow."
Barbara Di Chiara – 03 April 2014 –
