Pharmaceutical spending is the dark side of the Italian family budget. Those who don't want to see it don't see it, but it's there. In one year, more than 460 thousand people (7 out of 1.000 residents) asked for help from the facilities affiliated with the Pharmaceutical Bank. There are more than 2 facilities throughout Italy and they have provided free medicines and treatments to those who could not afford them. The request and response of solidarity, in essence, has seen the growth of that phenomenon that goes under the name of health poverty. Is it invisible? Not for those who are working hard to repress it. It is the same Banco Farmaceutico that is spreading alarming data, which has grown by 8,43% in one year. To bring out an intolerable human universe in a free economy. The numbers are also contained in the book “Tra le crepe dell'universalismo. Disuguaglianze di salute, poverty sanità e Terzo settore in Italia (ed. il Mulino) presented to the Chamber of Deputies and should, really, wake up politics from laziness on real and urgent interventions on health, territories, environment, prevention.
The welfare that doesn't exist
Banco Farmaceutico was founded in 2000 with the support of Opere Sociali and Federfarma, to help those who need assistance and help of any kind. The group of those in need is growing alarmingly month after month and the “waste” - according to the definition of Pope Francis- advances silently under the rhetoric of economic recovery proclaimed by the government that in six months has recorded a GDP of + 0,4%. The need for health care not covered by the National Health Service is added to energy poverty, to the indolence of thousands of people (even young people) in taking up the challenges of modernity and technology, because they lack the necessary means. Evidently bonuses and subsidies everywhere, antithesis of a new welfare to be connected to the digital and ecological transition, have satisfied only populists and sudden agitators. For the seventh consecutive year, households' pharmaceutical expenditure has increased, but the share paid by the Health Service has decreased. Of course, the country is aging, but the disputes over what to do to stop social decline, although not very funny, increasingly resemble those between Peppone and Don Camillo. Let us remember that in 2023, households' healthcare expenditure was 23,64 billion euros, about 1 billion more than the previous year. But 11 billion were paid entirely by families.
The new poor
But who are the poor health workers? They are mostly men and adults between 18 and 64 years old. Their health conditions reflect exactly the mirror of those who turn to the Banco Farmaceutico, with pathologies that have different causes and where environmental ones are anything but rare, in polluted areas, backwaters or hyper development. acute patients (65%) significantly outnumber the chronically ill (35%) but the unprotective State shows its face even to those who are not poor. The difficulties, say those involved in the Third Sector, also concern non-poor families. Istat has found that 4 million 422 thousand families in one year they have limited spending on medical visits and preventive check-ups. About 700 thousand are in conditions of absolute poverty and 3 million 744 thousand are non-poor families. They have ailments and disorders related to age, work, housing conditions, environmental quality. These numbers also burst into the national political competition with the left-wing parties to support a sacrosanct battle. How long has the word indigent been out of the language of politics? Yet almost 40% of families have completely given up - at least for once - on medical care, because it is too expensive. Isn't this a social alarm? The obscured drugs and treatments condemn a part of the country. Should health spending be contained starting with the Regions and economic and management asymmetries? For a country that is aging and leaves millions of people blocked by the cost of services at their own expense, these questions should not even be asked. But this is the point we have reached. With the popularity of those who pretend not to see.
