News coming for the health superticket. In the resolution on the Update Note to the Def approved on Wednesday, the parliamentary majority asked the Government to gradually review the structure of this tax to make it more equitable.
Signs of openness have come from the Executive: "The health system is certainly an area in which improvement and efficiency measures will have to be evaluated", said the Minister of Economy, Pier Carlo Padoan.
“We have been working for more than a year now on a redefinition of the superticket in Italy in a more equitable way – confirmed the Minister of Health, Beatrice Lorenzin – We have the recipe, but of course we have to make a careful examination of the budget. It's a matter of resources."
Let's try to better understand what is being discussed.
WHAT IS THE SUPERTICKET?
The health superticket is a tax of 10 euros more on all medical prescriptions for visits and tests, but the Regions have the power to launch alternative measures that ensure the same revenue. The adopted solutions are different.
The superticket is not paid in Sardinia, Valle d'Aosta, in the province of Trento and Bolzano and in Basilicata. Instead, the superticket of 10 euros is applied for each medical prescription that has a value of more than 10 euros in Lazio, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Marche, Molise, Abruzzo, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria. In Campania, Piedmont and Lombardy the superticket is applied progressively as the value of the recipe increases, while it is modulated on the basis of income in Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Umbria and Tuscany.
WHO HAS TO PAY IT?
All people who do not benefit from the exemption for pathology or that granted to under 6s and over 65s who live in families with an annual income of less than 36.152 euros must put a hand in their wallets.
On balance, about a third of those who use the services of the national health system pay the superticket every year. Like any ticket, this measure is also socially unfair, because - barring corrections on a regional basis - it weighs proportionally more on those with low incomes than on the rich. However, evasion is very high: the fake exempt would be even 20% of the total.
HOW MUCH IS THE SUPERTICKET VALID AND HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN EXISTING?
Today the superticket is worth around 600 million euros a year, but when it was introduced it was estimated that the revenue would reach 830 million. Over time, the increase in costs has had a boomerang effect, discouraging the use of public healthcare: between 2012 and 2015, receipts from co-payments decreased by 9,4%.
As for the origins of the superticket, the tax became operational in July 2011 with decree law number 98 of the Berlusconi government, but it had been introduced five years earlier, at the time of the Prodi government.
