According to press reports to the Ministry of Health, plans are being made for a specific tax to be applied to electronic payments for gaming activities, winnings and online gaming concessions.
According to reports from La Stampa, ''corroded by inflation, eaten away by the costs of contract renewals for doctors, with a billion reimbursements from the biomedical industries that are dancing, the public funding of our healthcare in 2024 will be lost along the way something like 15,2 .2021 billion. In fact, it is enough to do the calculations on the data of the Def, the government's economic and financial document, to discover that from 2024 to 127,8 the national health fund will also rise from 132,7 to 4,9 billion, equal to a plus 11,5 billion , but in terms of real spending capacity it jumps back by 2,5%, due to healthcare inflation, even higher than the general one, and the 2019 billion for the 21-XNUMX contract renewal of the white coats. Money already allocated by the executive and in any case bound, but which is always within the health fund.
So the shortage is to make your wrists tremble. Above all those of the governors, over half of whom see the specter of the commissioner and repayment plans on the horizon, which then translate into cuts in services and hiring freezes. Quite the opposite of what is needed right now to shorten the mileage waiting lists and recover the millions of services skipped during the Covid. Not to mention the fact that the new territorial health structures, houses and community hospitals are indeed financed by the Pnrr, but only for what concerns walls and machinery, while the considerable costs for doctors and nurses who will have to work there will always have to arise more asphyxiated health fund.
All this is well known by the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, who tomorrow will appear before his Economy colleague Giancarlo Giorgetti to ask for an additional 3-4 billion in the next maneuver. The rest of what is missing on the plate will have to be provided by the Regions, saving on inappropriate treatment and hospital wards that are under pressure with bed occupancy rates sometimes below 50%, while in others there is no space. But, backed by important pieces of the government majority, Schillaci will drop a joker on the MEF's table, that of a tax on gambling to finance health care. The idea was already made by the senator of the Brothers of Italy Franco Zaffini, president of the Health and Labor commission of Palazzo Madama. «For once, health care must play "bingo" - says the senator - and then what better way than to think of a "chip" on bets and bets made with electronic payment instruments, currently not subject to tax levy, to an increase on the winnings and still an increase in the fees for the concession of online games". In practice, a purpose tax which, in addition to financing public health, would also guarantee greater traceability of the game and of the players and therefore would contrast excess and gambling addiction. The reasoning will be repeated verbatim from Schillaci to Giorgetti, but with the rising rates decreed by the ECB and the consequent increase in public debt burdens, room for maneuver for next year remains limited.''
