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To say that Lombardy's management of COVID was a mega-disaster is an understatement. Lombardy had one-third of all Italy's COVID deaths and one-fourth of all cases. And now Lombardy is lagging behind almost all Italian regions on the COVID vaccination plan. 1/
As for today, Lombardy's vaccination rate is 3% of received doses. Comparison with neighboring regions is frightening - Veneto is at 15%, Piedmont 14%, Trento 34% (!), Bolzano 17%, Emilia Romagna 9%, and Liguria 10%. And we're only three days into the campaign 2/
This is only the last of many mishaps, mistakes, and plain shows of incompetence from Lombardy's government, that should have been long (forcibly) replaced by a commissar. But it shows once again that there's something structurally wrong with Lombardy's healthcare 3/
Let's remind here what the difference is: Lombardy's the only Italian region with "semi-privatized" healthcare, where local structures were replaced by "health hotspots" (i.e., hospitals!) run by private companies but paid by public money. 4/
This means your family doctor / local clinic role was replaced by a "healthcare center" supposed to do the same things - including visits at home, tracking your health state, etc. When COVID stuck, this arrangement has proved to be disastrous 5/ https://www.fedaiisf.it/sanita-piu-privato-e-meno-territorio-il-modello-lombardia-spiazzato-dal-covid-19/
This "model" has been followed in Lombardy for 20 years, with beds doubled in private clinics and, most important of all, the idea all your health troubles had to be "fixed" in a large (private) hospitals and not by your family doctor or localized health center. /6
The model was Britain's reforms of the 90s, and the illusion that "privatized" healthcare and making local SSRs (healthcare providers, previously fully public) "compete" one against the other for funds would make the system more efficient /7
It didn't. Regulations and checks vanished while taxpayer costs increased, Paradoxically it was Maroni, another center-right governor, who tried in 2013 to reverse these "reforms." The final result was just a further complication of the mix with catastrophic results in 2020, /8
Despite having been tempted by the "Lombardy model," no other Northern Italian region has adopted it, no matter its government's political alignment and no matter the central government's mandated healthcare cuts. /end
