Calabria, the report of the Court of Auditors on Health: “Financial chasm that feeds. Citizens pay, health in danger”

In ten years of the repayment plan, the health deficit of the Calabria region has been reduced by “only 6.2 million euros”. It is a devastating intervention that the audit section of the Court of Auditors photographing the collapse of Calabrian healthcare and points the finger at everything wrong with the regional health system. The judges of the Court of Auditors, in fact, remark in the report and in their interventions, “the pathologies of Calabrian health“Which, in 2019, absorbed” 79% of current expenses “of the entire Region. That just a few days ago finally got a new commissioner.

“In ten years, the healthcare deficit to be covered has decreased in absolute value by only approximately € 6.291 million (from € 104.304 million at 31 December 2009 to 98.013 million at December 31 2019). It should be remembered that, however, in these ten years, Calabrian citizens have continued to finance health care copiously, with the payment of the extra Irap and Irpef rates“. In essence, the Calabrians pay and health continues to be a sieve.

These are numbers, those pitted by the accounting judges, which nail both the Region and the government to their failure, which since 2010, with the commissioner, has decided to directly manage the regional health system. “In other words, – the Court of Auditors still maintains – the inhabitants of Calabria have been living for ten years bridging a financial chasm that grows and feeds from year to year. In the face of these “financial sacrifices”, the same citizens do not enjoy adequate health services “.

And again: “In the health management budget, at the end of 2019, there are receivables from the State for 428 million euros. We cannot fail to highlight that the health deficit, unlike that accumulated by a municipality, does not endanger the levels of public services in a limited area, but affects the implementation of the Lea (Essential levels of assistance, ed) for all inhabitants of a Region “. To be even more explicit, the Court of Auditors clarifies: “Not the separate waste collection service is endangered, not the school bus service, not the cleaning of the streets for the inhabitants of a single municipality, but the full protection of health, which is the ‘right of rights’, for the approximately two million inhabitants of the Calabrian territory”.

If the Covid emergency has the “merit” of having ignited a beacon on health care disasters always considered the manger of the worst regional policy, the criticalities of Calabrian health go beyond the pandemic and are structural. Starting from the deficit which “is only one of the problems of the regional health system. With the exception of the ‘Bianchi Melacrino Morelli’ hospital in Reggio Calabria, all the ASPs and hospitals end 2019 with a loss ”.

The figures are always mind-boggling. The losses, in fact, amounted to approximately 223 million euros which certify “the absolute administrative opacity that characterizes the management of many of these companies, the most obvious example of which is that of the Reggio Calabria Asp” where, according to what the board of statutory auditors of the health company reported to the Court of Auditors, “The accounting records are highly unreliable”. Each Calabrian healthcare sector has its own hole: “According to the information available – writes the Court of Auditors – the overdue debts towards the suppliers of the regional health service bodies currently exceed 604 million euros”. “But they are incomplete data. – add the accounting judges – Those relating to the Asp of Reggio Calabria are missing for which, also given the absence of financial statements approved since 2013, it is still impossible to reconstruct the debts accumulated over time “.

Debts that inevitably increase in Calabria, “because the average payment times of companies in 2019 were 195 days and default interest ‘starts’ 60 days after due date of the debt“. Suffice it to say that the “Health Authorities of the Region paid over 23 million euros in interest and legal fees in 2018 and over 32 million euros in 2019”. And this always excluding the data of the ASP of Reggio Calabria which are not available.

The warning from the president of the regional section of the Court of Auditors, Vincenzo Lo Presti, arrives on time: “Debts should not be hidden in the folds of accounting records, like dust under the carpet, but on the contrary, they must be highlighted and promptly welded. The delay in payments drains considerable liquidity from the economic system forcing entrepreneurs to resort to credit, often at costly if not usurious conditions. Instead, if the public administration timely honored its debts, this would be a driving force for economic development and the consequent injection of liquidity on the market it would indisputably favor the economic recovery ”. The conclusions are from the judge Stefania Anna Dorigo who edited the part of the report of the Court of Auditors on Calabrian health, underlining “a real dispersion of financial resources that could be directed more efficiently for the improvement of health services provided to citizens” .

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