Giorgetti: ‘The challenge is to turn balanced accounts into care for people’

‘The challenge for the coming years is to turn balanced budgets into care that reaches people.’ This was stated by the Minister for the Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, speaking at the launch of the “2026 Subsidiarity and Health Report”, presented by the Foundation for Subsidiarity at the University of Insubria in Varese.

Giorgetti addresses the president of the Giorgio Vittadini Foundation and emphasises that we need to ‘build on the experiences you have gathered together with those who implement them and with the regions, and draw from them concrete proposals on which rules to change and how to pay for the work that ensures continuity of care. ‘Let’s trial them and evaluate them over time,’ he points out, ‘not just in terms of today’s costs, because the cost of failing to provide prevention does not appear in any budget, but it is paid for all the same.’

‘A budget weighed down by interest payments imposes across-the-board cuts,’ emphasises the Minister for the Economy, ‘and only a balanced budget can afford to be selective and support what works.’ ‘This,’ he explains, referring to subsidiarity in healthcare, ‘is the role the State must play.’ According to Giorgetti, “finally, there is the role of households. Italians spend 41 billion a year out of their own pockets on healthcare, and for 8.6 per cent of households, these costs are unsustainable.” “When a country loses control of its debt, it no longer makes choices; it simply endures.”

“‘I believe we need to strengthen and better organise the role of health funds and pension funds,’ adds Giorgetti, explaining that ‘for health funds, the tax benefit must be linked to the services actually provided to members, and for pension funds, lifelong cover for those who are unable to look after themselves must become a component of every pension scheme’.