Italian public health has been mourning the shortage of doctors, nurses and beds for some time. The health of millions of citizens is at risk.
It is not infrequent that in order to have a visit from the public one is forced to wait months. It works differently in the private sector, but taking care of yourself is everyone’s right. Sometimes the public behaves like the private sector to the detriment of those who cannot pay.
Public hospitals acting like privates/web archive-Read it
And Milano comes a really sad story, which makes you angry but, at the same time, gives us a real picture of how healthcare is reduced today. Despite the urgent referral from the general practitioner, a woman was unable to obtain one quickly MRI for the daughter. For the same visit, if paid for, the same public hospital would have place after 3 days.
“We have already denounced how some accredited structures, using the excuse of the very long waiting lists of the national health service, propose the transition to the private sector, but here we are beyond: the public who behaves like a private person”- to tell this story to the microphones of Fanpage was the Doctor Vittorio Agnoletto, doctor, university professor and activist of Democratic Medicine. A few days ago the doctor received a phone call from a mother who was unable to have her daughter examined: the only way to get a visit immediately was pay at least 490 euros.
No place in public health
On the first day of February, the woman had called to reserve one uro magnetic resonance for the daughter with urgent 10-day binding. The Ats of Milan replied that her request had been added to a floating listThis would be a waiting list where patients are placed and then called back. However, no one contacted her again but the days went by and the daughter absolutely had to have an MRI.
Daughter needed an urgent MRI/web archive-Read it
At that point the woman tried to call the Cup to see if it was possible to do that same paid visit: services outside normal hours by doctors but always in hospital. The call center immediately offered her four dates, the first of which after just three days at a cost of 490 euro al Fatebenefratelli of Milan. Il Doctor Agnoletto he continues: “This is the serious aspect, the public structure said it did not have availability and, although the lady had said she could go to any Lombard province, they did not offer any other”. The only solution, therefore, was to pay at least 490 euros, reaching up to 700 in some cases, in order to have her daughter examined within a reasonable time. But that means that actually the place actually existed, paying for it.
What the Law says
There is a legislative decree– the 124 of 1998 – which establishes that if a public structure is not able to carry out an examination, or a visit, within the pre-established times, it must book it in other structures of the same territorial area. But not only that, if even this is not possible, she is required to pay a visit outside visiting hours pay only the ticket or nothing if the patient is exempt. The lady wrote it in an email to Ats and, magically, the place popped up. 1st March.
Doctor Agnoletto concluded embittered: “This cannot always be the way to manage public health. After the MultiMedica affair, where the operators who manage to move the request to the private sector obtain a prize, here the public behaves directly as a private sector. As a public I can’t find you a place anywhere, but if you want to come to me as a private person I’ll find it right away. If this logic continues, it will increasingly be possible to cure only what has economic resources”.
