The regional health service absorbs over 1 billion and 200 thousand euros per year, a third of the entire Region budget. A river of money. From 2014 to 2023, private healthcare absorbed approximately 309 million euros of public money to which must be added the turnover for direct services at the expense of citizens, those who can afford it. Money, lots of money. But they are not enough. Of course there was Covid, other money, other inconveniences, other problems. Let’s add healthcare migration which costs us almost 70 million euros. In short, there’s no way out.
The topic of the day is the hole of around 80 million in Lucanian healthcare that Bardi has tried to plug with resources not yet available and with accounting tricks. Therefore it was necessary to appoint the commissioner ad acta who must find the coverage of the expenses, i.e. the hole, by the end of this month. The controversies surrounding the affair are heated and at times appear instrumental. Throughout the recent electoral campaign before the vote on 21 and 22 April, healthcare was at the center of the attacks against Vito Bardi and the defense of the outgoing council. Crossfire over the famous hole, the waiting lists and the “disaster” in the services to protect citizens’ health.
Well, in addition to generic proclamations we didn’t hear solutions shouted out, but rather anathemas shouted against such and such. Meanwhile, the problems have remained the same for at least 20 years. And none of the political shouters can hold themselves out of responsibility for what is happening today. Yet, citizens do not ask for the moon even if, among the billions spent, the dozens of private clinics, private clinics, other private gadgets and an overwhelming amount of public hospitals, would be entitled to it.
What do citizens ask for? A few simple things that some people like to make complicated. Citizens would only need waiting lists to be compatible with the urgency of diagnoses and services; a health IT system that works; it would be enough for the access roads to the health facilities to be decent, for the ambulances to arrive on time and for them to have a doctor on board; that specialist visits are not postponed to the Greek calendars and that there are general practitioners in the villages. It’s the minimum wage.
Because, perhaps, it would be excessive to ask that the competitions for the recruitment of doctors and for the appointment of head doctors (those who are still available to reach Basilicata, few) are transparent. And perhaps it would be too much to ask that we stop with small useless hospitals, with useless departments, useless primary schools. And perhaps it would be too much to point out to politicians that public healthcare cannot be improved or saved if the politicians themselves – more or less, for one reason or another – are involved in the interests of private healthcare. It would also be too much to ask that mediocre managers and officials be prevented from keeping their hands in the dough in healthcare companies and hospitals. And it would also be too much to point out to doctors and primary doctors who work in the public sector that medicine should not be a means to accumulate personal wealth, to enrich private clinics and practices to the detriment of public structures and citizens. Another private clinic will open soon, we’ll talk about it again. Meanwhile, the distance between those who can afford treatment and those who cannot has grown and worsened, an unacceptable discrimination.
And to conclude, let it be known that the clear and obscure connections between politics and interests in public and private healthcare are the question of all questions. However, without asking too much, let’s at least intervene on that minimum wage which has not been guaranteed for decades. All it takes is a little skill, a bit of willpower and a lot of honesty. And this applies to everyone.
