Healthcare, UAP: “Defending the National Health Service to protect citizens’ healt

ROME 28 January 2026 – Defending the National Health Service means defending citizens, the right to health and the quality of care. This is the message launched by the National Union of Ambulatories and Polyclinics (UAP), which during a press conference also announced a national demonstration to be held in Rome on 14 March.

“Our healthcare system is being impoverished. We want to save Italian healthcare, we want to save Italians, to care for them with strategies and quality. We are united, we all want the same things, such as stopping the sell-off of the South that consortia are seeking to carry out. We want an Italy that, if it has networks, has networks for everyone,” said Mariastella Giorlandino, President of UAP.

“We want to send a message to citizens: we do not want to be politicized by anyone, because health is not politics; health is about substance and support for patients. Today we are talking about quality, services and, above all, speaking to citizens,” she continued. “We have had discussions, but we have not seen any concrete action. We have won four rulings before the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) which stated that the cuts were not appropriate; there is a 70% cut in reimbursements that particularly affects the South. If there are no funds, accredited private healthcare closes and, more often than not, is sold off to multinationals. An accredited facility must meet 420 requirements in order to operate, and that is right, but we ask that anyone providing healthcare comply with the requirements,” she concluded.

The first major issue concerns the tariff schedule, which determines how much the National Health Service pays for each healthcare service. Today, many tariffs are below cost, as already recognized by TAR rulings, with serious systemic effects: public healthcare providers and accredited facilities are forced to deliver services at a loss, leading to a reduction in supply, longer waiting lists and increased deficits, especially in regions under recovery plans. This mechanism does not save money; instead, it weakens the National Health Service and shifts costs onto citizens.

Added to this is the introduction of the so-called “pharmacy of services,” conceived as a parallel channel for delivering diagnostic services in derogation of the quality, safety and accountability requirements imposed on healthcare facilities. UAP stresses that, as currently configured, the pharmacy of services does not pursue a genuine objective of improving access to diagnostics, but rather introduces healthcare services lacking the necessary authorization requirements, driven by lobbying pressures rather than by healthcare planning oriented toward quality of care.

As if that were not enough, there is also a reorganization of the healthcare and territorial network underway without clear and shared criteria, which risks weakening local healthcare hubs and further distancing services from citizens. Here too, the absence of clear rules produces inequalities, inefficiencies and a loss of protection for patients. The overall result is an increasingly fragmented system in which identical healthcare services are subject to different rules, with a progressive lowering of guarantees for citizens. Bringing services closer cannot mean bypassing rules, nor creating a two-tier healthcare system.