During the regional council on Tuesday 30 April, an agenda of Fratelli d’Italia was approved, proposed by councilors Stefano Balleari and Veronica Russo, which requires the Liguria Region to draw up guidelines to guarantee access to intramoenia health services or at the accredited private sector for citizens who are unable to book the maximum times established by the priority class.
The words of the Health Councilor Angelo Gratarola: “Analyzing the legislative instrument carefully, it is written that the law applies in the absence of guidelines or pending guidelines, therefore suggestions for the drafting of guidelines are welcome. We need to find homogeneous solutions to avoid each local health authority having different interpretations and therefore be able to guarantee the same type of behavior from Ventimiglia to Sarzana. We are not interested in leaving the citizen free to find the service, but we are interested in providing the service and therefore increasing it the number of services, widen the pull of services themselves and reduce waiting lists”.
“The Meloni government is the one that has invested the most in healthcare, just think that at the time of the pandemic the funds allocated to healthcare were around 119 billion euros, at the moment we are talking about 134 billion which will become 136 billion next year billion euros. We must give certain rules to patients who have to have an exam but cannot book it within the deadlines set by the health service and so must necessarily turn to (accredited) private individuals with the simple payment of the ticket”. So instead the regional councilor Stefano Balleari (fdl) .
However, there was no shortage of controversy from the minority who did not vote for the agenda. The group leader of the Democratic Party Luca Garibaldi: “This problem has existed for 8 years, that is, since the Region has been ruled by the centre-right. We need to invest in the public sector, hire staff and avoid spending money on private services. It is absurd to make guidelines on a law that already exists. We are witnessing the failure of public health and instead of making agendas to say that things are bad and that they should be fixed, the need is instead to fix them and not leave citizens in uncertainty. We must not resolve the issue of waiting lists by allowing citizens to go to the private sector by only paying the ticket because this means that the public doesn’t want to do it. So if Balleari converts back to public healthcare, good for him and tell Meloni to put in more money too on the national health fund and tell President Toti not to make any more holes in healthcare given that we have paid one of 63 million euros with 35 million in cuts to healthcare for 2024 alone”. Which was echoed by Gianni Pastorino of Linea Condivisa: “There is no need for a regulation, the law is clear”.
