Healthcare cuts: here are the numbers involved and who is right

The tug-of-war between the regions and the government continues over the 1.2 billion 'cut' or 'remodulation' - depending on which version you choose - earmarked for earthquake-proofing hospitals and which have ended up at the centre of a clash in recent weeks. The funds are envisaged by the National Complementary Plan (an Italian version of the European Plan). But who is right between the two contenders? And what are the real numbers really at stake?

After an initial uprising of shields, the Regions have unanimously returned in recent days to insist on the request to revise the measure included in the latest Pnrr decree (the fourth) - expected in the Chamber of Deputies on 12 April - and say they are ready to knock on the Constitutional Court. The measure, which immediately aroused a thousand polemics, defunds the funds for the seismic safety of hospitals envisaged in the National Plan complementary to the Pnrr and indicates as an alternative way - to save these interventions for the safety of often very dilapidated healthcare facilities - that of drawing on the resources not yet used from the Ordinary Fund for Hospital Construction: this is the so-called Article 20 Fund of the budget law that in 1988 first launched a multi-year plan for hospital building of over 30 billion and that, according to the Executive, is not committed to the tune of 2.2 billion also because of often complicated and bureaucratic procedures. Residual sums that for the Government can be used precisely to cover the shift of funds from the NRP, thus maintaining the planned interventions.

But the Governors, as mentioned, have returned to protest, officially requesting in a Conference of the Regions the withdrawal of the measure: in particular, the abrogation of the provision of the Pnrr decree that cuts 1.2 billion to the regions for about 200 interventions for the seismic safety of hospital facilities, or a formal commitment for the reinstatement of the funds. If this does not happen, the regions are ready to turn to the Consulta.

"We will use all channels of collaboration and also those of non-cooperation, if necessary, to protect the National Health Service as much as possible. From an informal discussion we have seen an openness on the part of the government,' stressed the president of the Regions Massimiliano Fedriga yesterday. In short, for the Regions, these funds have been substantially subtracted and must be returned, and drawing them from the ordinary hospital building fund is not a possible way forward for them because it is money that has already been reserved on the basis of programme agreements that each Region signs with the government or that is in any case available for regional planning.

The government's response was also clear, with the Minister for European Affairs Raffaele Fitto: 'the government has not applied any cuts to the resources earmarked for healthcare but, on the contrary, has safeguarded all the planned interventions, and is now engaged, together with the Regions, in monitoring the interventions to ensure their timely implementation'.