Italy’s socialized health care system struggles along multiple dimensions, ranking third-to-last in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation, with a score of 37.29 (#29). While Italy’s fiscal crisis is well known, Italy ranked 19th in Fiscal Sustainability with a score of 37.81, due to moderate growth in health spending.
Italy performed below average across the WIHI’s four dimensions, ranking 30th for Choice (30.42), 25th for Quality (50.57), and 20th for Science & Technology (30.39). Italy’s health care costs are relatively low compared to its European peers, with severely restricted choice of new therapies and competing providers. A high debt-to-GDP ratio of 127.3%, combined with sluggish economic growth, have made slowing health care spending a top priority.
In 2020, Italy was one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with scenes of overwhelmed hospitals broadcast around the world.
Go here to read the rest.
Free healthcare and population control–a recipe for an totally atrophied world.
No matter where the Pope goes and needs health care, he will get the best of whatever that particular locale has. Pretty sure if Saudi Arabia were the only place that had the particular procedure he needed, he would be allowed to go, no problems (and with extra security provided by the local big wigs), ahead of a local, poorer individual. Cuz Photo ops and all.
Hardest hit in 2020. If you collate the data over the last 18 months, the death rate in Italy is about normal for occidental countries.
The problem with medical care is that different financing schemes and allocation schemes serve the preferences and interests of different sorts of providers and clients. Instead of attempting to strike a balance and stick to it, dim-witted politicians respond to complaints serially and then attempt to make costs opaque. You can see what that gets you here and there, varying according to local culture. In this country, the idea that politicians pander to is that everyone gets the care they want when they want it with the only visible charge a piddling co-pay. Which is, of course, unreasonable and unsustainable.
This story may be apocryphal: when Pope St. John Paul II was assasinated, two American surgeons who happened to be there took over from the Italians and saved his life. I can’t find anything on the web to confirm this. Anybody else heard about it?
https://www.smh.com.au/national/worlds-best-gut-doctor-had-surgical-skills-without-peer-20150721-gigxmg.html
His stamina was legendary. He treated around 500 patients a year, wrote or co-authored 13 books, contributed scientific papers to standard texts, lectured and taught younger surgeons in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, and made himself readily available for consultation.
Fazio was attending a conference in Paris in 1981 when doctors consulted him from Rome. They had operated on a man suffering serious gunshot wounds but were uncertain about the outcome. Several long-distance consultations followed with Fazio and two other American surgeons and Pope John Paul II survived.
Friends in the United States said that Fazio would have succeeded in any profession he chose, that he would have been “at least a cardinal in the Catholic church”. In Australia, an irreverent friend called him “the Pope’s bowel doctor”.
So whoever was working on the Pope in Rome knew to contact this guy, who helped AND got them in contact with two other American surgeons, and it worked out.
Health care is too big a term to toss around. The basic stuff, the level of tetanus shots and eyeglasses, that could be provided for free in just about any well-functioning economy. Not necessarily via government though. As a matter of charity, people in well-functioning countries should also be encouraged to provide for these services in worse parts of the world. But if the bar is high enough to include free bowel surgery for an 84-year-old, then no, it can’t be done. Or if it was doable, it would have to be our only priority. Like, no non-medical education, no non-medical technological improvements. If you want to make it “no non-medical research except as it improves society in order to enable it to produce better health care”, then you’ve got basically the modern free-market state, where improvements of any kind benefit all.
The basic stuff, the level of tetanus shots and eyeglasses, that could be provided for free in just about any well-functioning economy.
Well functioning economies do not provide goods and services for free. Philanthropic exercises may do so, but that’s distinct from the normal operation of the economy.
Agreed. Entities can provide those things for free in an environment where there is a well-functioning economy.
I guess I could have talked about safety as well. It’s not simply that some areas without functioning economies lack the ability to provide basic health care, they have created an environment where outsiders can’t provide aid. So there are three tiers: those who can, those who can be helped, and those who can’t be helped.
It’s not simply that some areas without functioning economies lack the ability to provide basic health care, they have created an environment where outsiders can’t provide aid.
Your gaze has alighted on Somalia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Congo, and Yemen for some reason.
One of the worst habits I picked up during the lockdown is doing YouTube deep dives on Third World countries. You’ve listed some of the flat-out failed states, but man, the conditions even in parts of some of the “successes” are sobering. As for Yemen, how do you pull a country out of that? It’s like the worst of Beirut, but without water.
the conditions even in parts of some of the “successes” are sobering.
PBS has been broadcasting about innovations of the Victorian era, among them the development of proper sewerage. This in what was ca. 1860 the world’s most affluent country. Sorry you got the idea in your head that these sorts of developments are not achievements.
“[F]or free” is a term that ought to be eliminated from everyone’s vocabulary. Why? Because there is not one single item in this Universe “for free.” There is always some kind of cost involved. Even in the Garden of Eden. How do we know that? Well, Adam and Eve were supposed to tend the Garden and have dominion over everthing. That takes time: and time is a form of “cost.” Things take time or money, or require making a choice in taking one object and making one thing instead of another with it. (Alas, Adam and Eve made a bad choice in eating an apple instead of peaches.)
.
Nothing is “for free”–someone, somewhere paid for it (with money, time, etc). We too easily forget that fact when things are “free.”
.
Foxfier thanks for linking the article. What a legacy! He seemed to have had a wonderful sense of humour. A country boy too, who made a difference in his field abroad.
As an Aussie I am sad to admit I have never heard of the late Dr Victor Fazio. If he was a sports personality or media personality he would have been a household name in Australia. Too bad those who make a difference to the world are not given the deserved recognition. It could inspire a young person to make a difference.
DJH God planted and established the Garden of Eden and placed Adam in it to till and keep the Garden. Then God created Eve. They were given dominion over everything but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God’s Garden, God’s rules. Eating of the forbidden fruit broke the lease. The descriptions of the Promised Land of Israel as a land flowing with milk and honey and being called a vineyard recall the Garden of Eden. Ancient Israel had the same problem as Adam and Eve did with honoring the terms of the lease, thus the exiles.