Healthcare, ten billion cuts arrive by decree: stop to visits and doctors

Dal ministero arriverà presto la lista delle patologie che prevedono analisi necessarie, negli altri casi si dovrà invece pagare di tasca propria. Il ministro Lorenzin: “Solo efficientamento, non c’è più niente da tagliare”

Of FQ | July 27, 2015 | Daily fact

The ten billion needed until next time stability Law? The government is likely to find them, in part, by cutting funding to healthcare. It won't be the usual linear cuts, says the spending review commissioner Yoram Gutgeld and the minister Beatrice Lorenzin, but a part of the savings will have to derive from measures aimed at making the system more efficient. The exponent of the New Centre-right has always asked for reinvest those funds in the National Health Service, but now they could instead take other routes.

"I am in complete agreement with the road map indicated by the commissioner - attacks Lorenzin - No linear cuts, also because there is nothing left to cut: instead there is the possibility of recovering resources thanks to greater efficiency and a new organization . A figure of around 30 billion is calculated, but if we can find 10, I'll be satisfied". The goal is to rake ten billion euros in 3-4 years aiming for the 13 billion that slip away with unnecessary prescriptions and visits. Figures that should have been used for modernize healthcare, but which according to Gutgeld “can be used to achieve public finance objectives”. "I am fighting for the resources to remain in the system - argues Minister Lorenzin - then if taxes are reduced it is clear that this is a benefit of all. A part may go towards reducing taxes but the rest goes to personnel, research and new technologies, and in general to improving services".

The Minister of Health would like “the savings to be used for cover the holes we have in research, to make new life-saving drugs available to all, and to unblock the turnover. In Italian healthcare we have blocked generational turnover and we are wasting a human capital in which we have invested billions in training".

The measures envisaged by the commissioner, anticipated in an interview aRepublic, concern, among other things, the purchase of goods and services and the appropriateness of prescriptions. There is talk of cuts for 2.3 billion a year for the three-year period 2015/2017. At the top of the list of cuts are there specialist services unnecessary: the list of pathologies that require analysis will soon arrive from the ministrynecessary, for all different cases you will instead have to pay out of pocket. The decree provides for the recovery of funds from even with the salary cut for doctors who prescribe unnecessary analyzes and checks. When the doctor makes the prescription, he will have to report the indication of the condition deliverability. Visits and treatments that go beyond those limits will be the full responsibility of the patient.

“The recipes are by no means new,” he protests though Rosanna Dettori, general secretary of the Fp CGIL. "There is worry: having to cut 35 billion for the tax cut, the usual choices are made, we go to health care and local authorities which, however, are already collapsing ".

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