Every year, in Italy, about 40 billion for private healthcare spending that is, to make up for the shortcomings of the public system. A potentially huge basin for the insurance market, which is currently worth just 3 billion in the field of health protection. “There are still few Italians who take out health insurance – said Fiammetta Fabris, CEO of Unisalute, the Unipol group company entirely dedicated to comprehensive healthcare coverage – but the market is growing rapidly: we have reached 8 million customers, most of which through collective agreements and corporate welfare. There is still a lot of leeway on individual customers”. Unisalute, which closed 2018 with collections of 410 million (+10% on 2017), organized a meeting in Milan in collaboration with Nomisma to talk about this, with a focus on the prevention and treatment of women's health: "Today – revealed Silvia Zucconi of Nomisma presenting the research of the Prevention and Health Observatory – only one in five women has sickness insurance, but almost half of the Italians aged between 30 and 65 declared their interest, above all in the face of affordable prices and the possibility of covering their families too, in stipulating supplementary health coverage”.
The research, focused on female cancer prevention and treatment in Italy, highlighted a good propensity for prevention: almost nine out of ten Italians, 87%, always in the 30-65 age group and out of a sample of 1.300 women throughout the country, declared that they had carried out at least one specialist cancer prevention exam in the last 3 years. A fairly high percentage which is not affected, as happens on other occasions, by differences according to social class, educational qualification or geographical position: even among the less educated and also in Southern Italy, where there is less attention these issues, the percentages are lowered but remain around 80%. Furthermore, as many as 37% of all those interviewed decide to check their health independently and not after medical advice. So why should all these women, 71% of whom go to the national health service (in 80% of cases for mammography examinations), need supplementary coverage? This is always revealed by Nomisma's research, according to which the difference in full satisfaction rate between public and private is still very large: 44% against 72% in the case of mammograms, 36% against 67% for the Pap Test, 36% against 73% for the HPV test. Looking at general satisfaction (even with not excellent scores), for example for breast ultrasound, 93% of Italians approve of private assistance and 78% of public assistance.
To weigh on the judgment of the public system are, as expected, above all long waiting times (in 35% of cases) and the inability to choose a doctor and to always be followed by the chosen doctor (26% of cases). "For example - reveals Silvia Zucconi - for mammography, over 50% of patients who go to a public facility must wait more than two months to visit, while 84% of women who turn to the private sector carry out the examination in less than a month”. Not only that: in the event of a tumor pathology, there is also the problem of dealing with the costs: 38% of the affected women had to face expenses in the course of treatment (13% declared having spent over 20.000 euros) expenses however perceived as too high by 48% of women diagnosed with cancer. And during the course of treatment, 26% had the need for home assistance, mainly resorting to the support of family members (62%). "That's why - added the CEO of Unisalute Fiammetta Fabris - it's not just a question of offering reimbursement of medical services, but also of providing services, providing assistance to the patient during and after treatment, including through home support and psychological".
In the face of a high number of women who in any case carry out prevention or are oriented towards doing it, however there is also 13% of Italians between the ages of 30 and 65 who in recent years they didn't even have a specialist checkup visit. "In this case we are dealing with cultural obstacles - argues Zucconi of Nomisma -: fear of exam results (34%), laziness (31%), embarrassment (24%), but also the feeling of not having any need or even, for 15%, lack of time, are the main reasons why Italian women do not undergo specialist preventive medicine examinations”. However, they will have to start doing it, especially considering the demographic evolution that confronts us with a scenario of an increasingly elderly population subject to chronic diseases: from 1990 to 2018, the over 75 population in Italy almost doubled, and from here to 2030 it will further increase by 18%, against an expected decline in the resident population. In just over 10 years, one in four Italians will be at least 65 years old, according to the estimates provided by Nomisma. Today, among the first causes of death, after pathologies of the circulatory system (36%), there are neoplasms, or tumors (29%): among the oncological pathologies, one of the most frequent deaths concerns women and it is caused by breast cancer (17% of total cancer deaths in Italy).
