Maneuver 2027, FP Cgil: "With cuts to the NHS, strong risk of hospital closures"

The union highlights that Italian healthcare spending, equal to 6.2% of GDP in 2026, is lower than that of many European countries. For the secretary Federico Bozzanca, the defunding of the NHS puts the constitutional right to health at risk

"With this progressive and inexorable reduction of resources to the National Health Service there is a very strong risk of further cuts to services, closure of hospitals, devaluation of workers increasingly under stress who will be pushed even more to go and work elsewhere. In short: we are faced with a very serious tampering with the constitutionally guaranteed right to health". The general secretary of FP Cgil, Federico Bozzanca, wrote this in a note. Germany allocates 11% of its GDP to public health, France 9.4%, Sweden 9.3%, the United Kingdom 9.2%, Slovakia 6.4%, he underlines. In 2025 in Italy it was 6.2%, "and in the coming years it will decrease further. Dramatic data that risks condemning the National Health Service to terrible agony".

"A very specific political choice"

For the secretary of the FP Cgil, the defunding is not causal. "Reducing funding for healthcare is a very specific political choice, as is making a small investment in emergency room staff, leaving other services behind, effectively reducing the scope of the public service - observes Bozzanca -. A strategy that shifts the axis from right to privilege, from the public to the private sector - the private sector that does not renew national contracts -, which mortifies the professionals who dedicate themselves to caring for people every day, which tampers with what has always been considered an excellence, the National Health Service.

Waivers of treatment are increasing

The union also highlights how in Italy, unlike other European countries, the reduction in public spending is accompanied by an increase in private spending, with costs increasingly borne by families. A dynamic which, according to the FP CGIL, contributes to fueling the phenomenon of giving up treatment. "In 2025, as many as 9.6% of the population, equal to over 5.6 million people, declared that they have given up at least one specialist visit or diagnostic test, even though their need for it will be increasingly serious".

Joining the general strike

For FP CGIL, the country is facing a progressive weakening of public health. "We are faced with a gradual dismantling of the National Health Service", says Bozzanca, explaining that for this reason too, on 20 November the union will "convincedly" join the general strike proclaimed by the CGIL: "We will strike in defense of all workers, and of all citizens. At stake are the principles of universality, equality and fairness, the cornerstones of our democracy."