Spending in relation to GDP
In all likelihood, the source of Meloni’s numbers is the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenas). In March Agenas he wrote in a report that in 2024 the financing of the National Health Service will reach the aforementioned 134 billion euros. According to the agency, this figure corresponds to a value equal to 6.8 percent of GDP, an increase compared to 6.6 percent in 2023, when the financing was almost 129 billion.
The absolute values are confirmed also by the Court of Auditors, but Agenas’ figures have at least two problems. The first problem: the agency used Istat estimates of nominal GDP updated in September 2023, which stopped at 2022. If we compare the value of the annual funding to the NHS with the most up-to-date estimates, revised upwards in March, the ratio between financing and GDP falls. The second problem: how has explained Lorenzo Borga on The paper, Agenas made a mistake in estimating the value of nominal GDP for 2023 and 2024 (a year not yet concluded). The agency applied a growth of 0.7 percent to the 2022 GDP to calculate the 2023 GDP and applied the same growth percentage to the 2023 GDP to calculate the 2024 growth. The annual growth of 0.7 percent one hundred was the one estimated by Istat when Agenas did the calculations, but the national statistics institute refers to real GDP and not to nominal GDP, i.e. the GDP used by the agency. This is no small difference: real GDP growth is in fact net of inflation, so with its error Agenas underestimated the absolute value of GDP to which it related the value of funding to the National Health Service. In this way, the ratio between financing and GDP is overestimated, which in 2024 is not equal to 6.8 percent.
