In Italy, Health Care Enshrined as a Constitutional Right

By Cyril Tuohy

Italy is sometimes thought of as a broken state where governments – since World War II more than 60 at last count – turn over more frequently than pizzaiolos flipping dough.

Italians typically feel allegiance to their cities first – Rome, Florence or Venice – and to the Italian flag second.

But the country has so much cultural wealth to offer that we’re all willing to cut Italians some slack if they feel a sense of guilt over siding with their hometown before pledging allegiance to the red, white and green, or even to the church - no matter how much Italians worship their shrines.

But when it comes to health insurance, there’s nothing broken about Italy.

The Constitution of the Italian Republic, approved on Dec. 22, 1947, guarantees the protection of health care as a right.

Under Title II governing ethical and social relations, Paragraph 32 states plainly that the Italian “Republic safeguards health as a fundamental right of the individual and as a collective interest, and guarantees free medical care to the indigent.”

Some nations – the U.S. – enshrines free speech and the right to bear arms in its founding document. In Italy, health care makes the cut.

Whether citizens living in some of Europe’s most expensive real estate in Italy’s industrial northern cities or whether scraping by in outskirts of isolated villages of Sicily in the south or Sardinia to the west, the Italian state is constitutionally required to protect the health of its citizens.

Citizens carry a national health card, according to one of the tour guides I spoke with recently during a vacation to Rome with my family.

A Long History and a History of Longevity

And a good thing, too.

Italians are going to need such health care protection guarantees.

Members of a nation that did more than nearly any other to promote the virtues of the Mediterranean diet (among other wonders) seem to be living longer than anyone else on Earth.

On April 15, 2017, when Emma Morano died sitting in her armchair in Verbania on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the Piedmont region after living for more than 117 years, she was believed to be the last surviving person born in the 1800s, according to news reports.

Morano, born Nov. 29, 1899, attributed her longevity to a daily diet of two raw egg and some raw minced meat, but she was far from the only member of her family to live a long life.

Her mother, an aunt and some of her siblings made it into their 90's and one of her sisters died at age 102, according to a report in The Guardian chronicling her death.

Raw eggs and Mediterranean diets aside, escaping mention is the fact that Morano and her siblings live in a nation where health care is guaranteed and you can’t help but think that her regular doctor’s visits may have had a role to play in their longevity.

It's doubtful Morano, her family and other supercentenarian Italians had to shell out much in out-of-pocket costs and coinsurance and all the other burdens that saddle Americans.

Living to 117 – there’s hardly anything broken about that.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Writer Cyril Tuohy has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].