Digital books and detailed healthcare receipts have been dropped from the budget

The 2027 Budget Bill is set to lose its first three provisions. Indeed, there are three provisions that the Bureau of the Budget Committee of the Chamber of Deputies has asked to be removed from the text of the Bill on the grounds that they are of a regulatory nature: Article 69, paragraph 8, on detailed healthcare receipts; Article 105 on digital textbooks available at a 50 per cent discount and for download; and Article 115 on staff assigned to special commissioners for disasters. The final decision will rest with the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Lorenzo Fontana, where the bill has been tabled.

The first provision for which a request for deletion has been made is the one which entrusts to a decree of the Ministry of Health – subject to agreement at the State-Regions Conference – the task of setting out the characteristics of the document to be issued to the patient, in digital or paper form, containing all the information regarding the type of service provided by the National Health Service (NHS), the corresponding fee, and the relevant procedures for its issue.

The stated aim of the provision was to ensure maximum transparency regarding the costs of healthcare services covered by the National Health Service (NHS) and provided by public and private healthcare facilities accredited by the NHS, with particular reference to specialist outpatient and A&E services not followed by hospital admission, in cases where the visits were not characterised by emergency or urgent conditions.

The regulation that had sent booksellers into a rage is also set to be scrapped, and publishers. This rule required publishing houses to market a digital version of school and university textbooks at a cover price discounted by 50 per cent. The purchaser would thus have had the right to print a single hard-copy version at home or in a shop to replace the original.

Article 115 of the budget bill, which introduced amendments to the general regulations governing post-capacity reconstruction, is also set to be struck out, again for procedural reasons. This article allowed the special commissioners to use the operating expenditure fund for staff costs as well.