Do you remember Lady Asl? The queen of raids on health care funds, with invented services and concrete bribes that caused taxpayers to lose 80 million euros? In the legendary suite of the Sheraton which housed her headquarters, Anna Iannuzzi, Lady Asl, gave audience under a flag with the keys of St. Peter. «And she was very devoted to St. Anthony: which is why she gave the men of God envelopes full of cash to give to charity. The prelates, from cardinals Bertone and Ruini to bishop Apicella accept the charity and have themselves photographed with her. But it is the woman who is aware that closeness to the monsignors is a viaticum for those who want to do business in health care ». Is the Pope still there? Yes, there is a papal kingdom in Rome. Who acts for good works and often performs good surgical operations but is financed with public money. •Among the Roman health stakeholders, number one is the Vatican. He is the largest medical entrepreneur in the region and drains huge sums, out of all rules, which go | to feed eight hospitals managed directly by religious structures, two university polyclinics and a plethora of nursing homes. In addition to two hospitalization and treatment institutes of a scientific nature, one of which is under international law: the pediatric Bambin Gesù which is even the territory of the Vatican, therefore completely autonomous from the Italian state even though it is generously financed with our general taxation, and the Idi (Dermopathic Institute of the Immaculate) ». The first complete x-ray of the pontifical presence in public assistance is presented by Daniela Minerva in her investigative book "La fiera delle Sanità": a volume that in ten chapters traces the drift of the sector in Italy, from the Lombardy of privatizations to the Campania of collapse, from the Calabrian nurses at gunpoint to the subdivision of the barons, from the Sicily of waste to the Emilian model. Daniela Minerva, journalist of "L'espresso", is an act of love towards the National Health Service, the dream of equality in the face of the disease enshrined in the Constitution and ridden by Barack Obama in the campaign that brought him to the White House. In Italy, however, public care is sinking into the abyss in the budget holes, betrayed by a political class that fuels inefficiency and causes citizens' distrust: "Erasing rights to get your hands on a 100 billion euro cake". In this avalanche, Lazio presents the most macroscopic anomaly with a foreign state that provides assistance, often of an excellent level, on behalf of the Italian state. The volume sifts through the situation of the Gemelli, of the biomedical campus created by Opus Dei (32 million a year, with a cost per hospitalization that went from 2,483 euros in 2005 to 2,910 in 2007), of the Bambin Gesù (50 million from the Region and the same amount from the Finance), of the Idi Dermatological Institute (30 million a year from the Region for 300 beds). And he recalls: «More than one Catholic felt a pang in his heart when at the beginning of 2008, just after the publication of the first plan to reduce the health deficit planned by the Marrazzo junta, which cuts the budgets of all the Capitoline hospitals, Benedict XVI, speaking to local administrators, commented: "We know very well how serious the difficulties that the Lazio Region has to face in the health sector are, but we must equally note how dramatic the situation of Catholic health facilities is often, even very prestigious and of recognized international excellence". The result? «The fact is, however, that at the end of May 2008 the return plan
