Matej Mikulic
Research expert covering health, pharma & medtech
Private health insurance in Italy - statistics & facts
Italy’s health care service (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale -SSN) is publicly funded and guarantees health care to all citizens using the Italian National Service card, provided free of charge to all having the right to access the Italian SSN. In recent years, the share of people combining the use of the Italian SSN and private care, paying out-of-pocket or accessing it through supplementary health insurance, has increased. As a matter of fact, private health expenditure in Italy grew from 34.2 billion euros in 2012 to 41 million in 2021. This increase is connected to the Italian SSN struggling to satisfy the needs of its aging population, with increasingly long waiting lists that do not allow it to deliver proper care. Nevertheless, Italy is still among the European countries with the lowest private health insurance penetration, with 0.19 percent in 2020.
