A cut of almost 500 million euros due to the maneuver. This is the risk that Lombardy's healthcare system runs, following the approval of the Budget by the Council of Ministers: "We are being cut by almost half a billion euros - says the Lombard Welfare Councilor, Guido Bertolaso - The cuts are truly unsustainable for all the regions and for us too: it means not being able to complete the work on the waiting lists, not making community homes and community hospitals fully function and not encouraging healthcare personnel to work in the public sector as we're trying to do."
The maneuver approved by the Council of Ministers envisaged the allocation of 2.4 billion euros to the national health system (to which must be added another which had already been foreseen in the 2026 Budget) for 2027: less than half of the money that had been requested by the Regions and by the ministry itself. Hence the words of Bertolaso, who points the finger at "the truly unfortunate choices of recent years, the Superbonus, the citizen's income and the many expenses that were incurred immediately after Covid in the name and on behalf of Covid, while what should have been done to solve the problem was much different. Now all this gigantic debt is falling on us and therefore we must try to manage it". So here is the hope: "We are gearing up to manage a possible budget that maintains the numbers that came out of the Council of Ministers, but we will do everything to ensure that this allocation is improved to allow us to continue working well over the next year".
Also because the risk for Lombardy is not only that it will no longer have half a billion in its belly for 2027. But also that, in the regional budget, almost 250 million will be lost if the proposal of some regions, led by Marco Marsilio's Abruzzo, to review the methods of distribution of the indistinct healthcare fund for 2026 is accepted.
Step back: in recent days in the Health Commission of the State-Regions Conference, the governor of Abruzzo presented a proposal to modify the methods of division of the health fund between the regions, already for 2026. The proposal envisages reviewing the division criteria, which today are essentially based on the number of citizens: in practice, the more populous regions - such as Lombardy - receive more than the less populous ones. However, according to several governors, the parameters should be revised taking into account new factors, such as low population density, the aging of the population, the presence of difficult-to-reach areas in the regional territory.
Result, if the new criteria were to pass, Lombardy would already lose almost 250 million by 2026: "We are facing an absolutely unacceptable assault on diligence by some regions of our country who invented, at the end of October this year, therefore two months from the end of the 2026 financial year, a hypothesis of remodulation of what is the indistinct fund of the national health fund which represents 97-98% of the entire health fund”, explains Bertolaso.
Finally, the thrust of the owner of Lombard Welfare: "The unacceptable thing is that a request of this kind is presented with the financial year almost over. We have made commitments with the private partner for the waiting lists. We have made commitments with the entire world of regional healthcare regarding the completion of the Cup. We have made commitments with the healthcare personnel who have work shifts which in certain situations are almost unacceptable".
