Health care for the homeless, the trial starts in 2025

The law intended to fill a gap in Italian healthcare was approved unanimously:those who do not have a residence do not have access to a general practitioner.

Now it's official.Starting from 2025, therefore in less than two months, in 14 metropolitan cities where the presence of homeless people is highest, a biennial trial aimed at progressively guaranteeing the right to healthcare even for those who do not have a registered residence.To put it bluntly:to those who sleep on the street and who currently, due to the law in force, not having a declared address are effectively excluded from the possibility of having a general practitioner.

Approximately four months after the first approval of the Chamber, the Senate also voted on the provision - unanimously, as only rarely happens - which is therefore now definitive law.The provision provides for the establishment of a fund of one million euros for each of the years 2025 and 2026, intended to finance an experimental program:the government will monitor the implementation of the law, presenting an annual report to Parliament.The trial will allow us to evaluate how many homeless people want to access a GP and quantify the costs necessary to potentially expand coverage, promoting more effective and sustainable prevention.

The cities in which the experimentation for the homeless will start are Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Messina, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Rome, Turin and Venice.The definitive approval of the proposal, which originated in the Chamber from the Democratic Party and instead had a Northern League parliamentarian as rapporteur in the Senate, was celebrated by Street Lawyer, the non-profit organization that deals with the rights of the homeless, as the culmination of "a battle lasting more than fifteen years.A fight carried out with all our strength in the halls of Parliament, in a thousand initiatives and in as many conferences organized throughout Italy.Today we crown what for a long time seemed like an impossible dream" despite the fact that it seemed to everyone to be a basic right:finally even those who live on the streets will be able to get treatment and have a GP.