A quarter of Italian families report economic difficulties in terms of health services. With regard to 2022, this difficulty is confirmed above all for the citizens of the southern regions (28.5%) and the Islands (30.5%). In addition, a third of citizens (33.3%) say they have had to give up health services and / or interventions due to unavailability of health facilities and waiting lists. And this trend is confirmed and increases also in 2023. This is the trend that emerges from the II Report on the Italian Health System 'The thermometer of health', prepared by Eurispes and Enpam.
The Report also reports that Italians spend out of their own pockets on health for services and medicines in whole or in part (payment of a ticket) not covered by the NHS annually almost 40 billion euros, reaching a share of GDP of more than 2%. Added to this is the intensification of health mobility, generated by the need to turn to public structures in other regions to obtain NHS benefits that cannot be paid in the territory of residence due to deficits. In this regard, the amounts paid by the Regions that 'sell' patients to those able to provide services, highlights Eurispes, "determine a further difficulty in health budgets already compressed by the repayment plans. On the contrary, the Regions that provide many services to non-resident citizens can count on an over-budget that makes it possible to invest in structures and personnel, which primarily benefit resident citizens".
In terms of efficiency, the gap between some regions of the North and those of the Centre-South, therefore, inevitably widens. At the two extremes, in 2018 the Lombardy Region recorded a positive balance of almost 809 million euros, while the Calabria Region a deficit of almost 320 million euros and the Campania Region of more than 302 million. In addition to the burdening of the economic accounts of the individual regional health systems, health mobility brings out the phenomenon represented by almost 1.5 million citizens who in 2018 had to turn outside the region of residence for treatment.
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Osservasalute, Italians increasingly obese, lazy and depressed - Health & Wellness
Italians are increasingly overweight (12% of the population, almost 6 million adults, is obese and, overall, 46.2% of those over 18 are overweight) and not very active, with more than a third of people (33.7%) declaring... (ANSA)