ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Revision of health rates and need to ensure a stable, up-to-date and sustainable system for public, private and privately accredited structures, and for citizens. This is what UAP – National Union of Ambulators, Poliambulators, Entities and Private Hospitality asks, during a press conference with President Mariastella Giorlandino, in the presence of the presidents of the Associations belonging to the Union and moderated by Maria Grazia Cucinotta, for many years alongside Giorlandino in solidarity initiatives of social protection, in particular in favor of the most fragile and at risk, face and support of the Foundation Art. “We continue too often to talk about public health and private health as if they were two opposing systems. It’s not like that. Our order has built the National Health Service as a public responsibility system in which care is provided through public facilities and accredited private facilities“. President UAP says so, Mariastella Giorlandino. “The private accredited is therefore an integral part of the SSN network: it integrates the public, it does not replace it. Responsibility must remain public. And the public who needs to know the health needs, program the offer, establish rules and priorities, check appropriateness and quality and ensure essential levels of assistance.”.
“But if the system is one, we must learn how to program as a unique system the capabilities we have available. After over a decade of waiting – he explains – in November 2024 the new tariff nom of the outpatient specialist was approved. We call for the protection of citizens’ health. Accredited private health is a public service, politics must come out of slogans. We want citizens in the centre and the quality of the service; for two years we have fought for the adjustment of the rates, but from the Ministry have come out the same that were the unavailable ones, they have increased of 2.040 only 445 of which 158 under the Istat revaluation – emphasizes – . This means that a visit to 23 euros cannot be done. But it is not only the economic aspect, we want quality, we want to ensure that those who are sick can make clinical paths. Holiness must save people’s lives and unfortunately, by now, so many pathologies are out of control”, the president explains. Italy therefore does not have today a general and stable mechanism capable of preserving in time the real value of health rates. UAP proposes a simpler and more transparent method: to build a strict tariff base, analytically determining the costs of the individual benefits through an effective comparison with public health, private accredited, Regions and technical institutions; to update annually the rates on the basis of an official index; to reserve the structural revision of the costs at multiannual intervals.
A more predictable system, less exposed to litigation and even less expensive to administer. The question is not only about accredited private health: rates lower than efficient costs also damage public structures, which nevertheless support the real cost of benefits. An incongruous tariff, therefore, is not necessarily a saving for the National Health Service: it can simply transfer the cost elsewhere and reduce the overall capacity of care. “We do not ask to replace the public with the private. We ask for a stronger national health service, in which the public fully exercise its responsibility for driving and use intelligently all the skills that are part of the system – concludes Giorlandino. Because the citizen waiting for a resonance does not ask who owns the equipment. Ask the National Health Service to be treated well and in time. And then the message is simple: public + private accredited = National Health Service. One system, one right to cure.”.
Paolo Poletti, UAP consultant, emphasizes that the general request is “the quality of care to respond to the needs of citizens. I speak in defense of public health because Article 32 of the Constitution draws a system in which health responsibility is a head to the public – he explains. Therefore, we must recover the capacity for directing and guiding also of private investment because we cannot leave unused resources”. Moderator of the appointment Maria Grazia Cucinotta who remembers to be “promotor of prevention for more than 30 years and when I tell people to do prevention they answer me: they told us that the budget is over or they talk about long waiting lists. So it is necessary to try to find a solution because those who are sick do not choose to be and should be protected. We must give the opportunity to all citizens to do controls and prevention, because prevention saves life, but they must be able to do it.”.
– photo xb1/Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
