In Italy 2.7m Dependent Elderly Are the Great Challenge of Healthcare and Welfare
The 2016 Oasi Report, the Observatory on the Italian Health Service presented this morning at Bocconi, singles out assisting dependent elderly people as the great challenge of healthcare and welfare systems for the coming years. Of the 2.7 million dependent elderly, only 200,000 are fully cared for in dedicated facilities, another 600,000 are assisted at home, their needs not fully met, and the rest flock to the NHS, in a chaotic search for assistance and care, especially if free. In this scenario, the hospital and personal care workers become an immediate, although potentially inappropriate, response to family emergencies.
The economic-financial balance is no longer sporadic, as the NHS is in surplus for the third year in a row. This balance is the result of six years in which health spending has not increased, while in the rest of Europe grew at an average rate of around 4%.
Strong regional imbalances remain, not in terms of deficit, as the financial recovery is widespread (the only relevant deficits, in 2015, concerned Sardinia, - €340 mln; Liguria, - €110 million and Molise, - €25 mln), but in terms of coverage. The same dependents' assistance rate is almost zero in some regions of the South and the life expectancy varies depending on geographical area and education. "There is a distinct and potentially growing gap between regional health services of the Center-North and the South in terms of public health offer, private health expenditure and, above all, social and health services ", says Francesco Longo, main editor of the 2016 Oasis Report, along with Patrizio Armeni, Lorenzo Fenech, Alessandro Furnari, Francesco Petracca and Alberto Ricci.
Italian policy makers, the Report accuses, struggle to consider health a driving force of economic development. But the ISTAT figures for 2014 indicate that health and social care spending, at 149 billion, is the seventh national economic sector in terms of gross product, and sixth if you add the production of medicines (24 billion). The health and social care product is just below that of the main compartment of manufacturing, i.e. machinery and equipment (152 billion), but higher than other driving sectors of the national economy such as finance and insurance (142 billion), food (129 billion), hotels and restaurants (102 billion) or textiles and fashion (81 billion).
Yet, the share of health expenditure against the total expenditure for social protection has been steadily shrinking since 2008 (26.2%) to date (23.5%) and the level of total per capita expenditure for health in Italy ($ 3,239 in 2014) is lower than in the United Kingdom (3,377), France (4,508), Germany (5,182) and the US (9,403). The private health spending accounts for 3.4% of household spending, against a 9.8% dedicated, for example, to hotels and restaurants.