"Health used to be the prerequisite for being free and independent, instead it now entails a web of preventions and precautions, protections and passes that reduce freedom and independence... A health cape hangs over heads like a sword of Damocles, shrouding society and reducing citizens to the rank of patients and long term patients on free release. Tracked and always available in case of recall."
Marcello Veneziani, “La Cappa”, Marsilio 2022
Toward health care subordinated to lifestyles?
Last February, Bertolaso, the Lombardy region's councillor for Welfare, proposed establishing a points-based health care card, aimed at creating a system of incentives and forms of rewards for those who comply with prescriptions about proper lifestyles. At the moment, it does not appear that the initiative has had any concrete follow-up, but it is very likely, as has happened on other occasions, that sooner or later it will be implemented, perhaps with some appropriate adjustments to make it more palatable.
It is, ultimately, another among the many bad gifts of the 2030 Agenda, which, often remaining under the radar, is being progressively implemented in all Western countries, with its load of environmentalist and politically correct rhetoric, and its ubiquitous and cloying buzzwords, such as resilience, sustainability, and inclusion.
The obsession with citizen behaviors found fertile ground in the pandemic period, when for months we were pelted with the pressing advice and unfailing prescriptions of doctors and experts of various stripes, who invaded television studios to educate us on the supposed benefits of social distancing, masks and lockdown.
It was a period that also rekindled attention to the issue of public health care costs. The need to cope with the most critical phases of the pandemic mobilized the bulk of human and financial resources as well as hospital facilities, producing heavy negative consequences on treatment and clinical examinations related to guards other diseases, even the most serious ones. With the emergency phase over, a debate has therefore opened on the financial sustainability of our country's public health care model as designed by our constitution. From many quarters, the need to reduce public spending in this area has been highlighted, limiting it to assistance to be provided to the most fragile individuals (the elderly, citizens with low income levels), or in any case rigorously selecting the health care services to be left to the state budget. The desirability of supporting and promoting citizens' use of private forms of health insurance, following the example of what happens in many Western countries, was also raised.
The media dictatorship of the "experts"
But, above all, the issue of citizens' responsibility for their own health status has emerged with increasing force. In essence, many experts, or alleged experts, and even some politicians seeking visibility, argue that in order to limit the impact of health expenditures on the public budget, people should be induced to adopt lifestyles aimed at protecting their health and preventing the onset of disease as much as possible. Hence the proposal for a strong awareness-raising effort about the risks associated with unbalanced diet, alcohol consumption, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, etc. An orientation that is directly related to the initiatives undertaken by the WHO (World Health Organization), which precisely on these issues has drawn up a dangerous proposal for reform of the International Pandemic Treaty, blocked in recent weeks also thanks to the contrary position expressed by the Italian government (to which the meritorious work of political awareness carried out by some parliamentarians such as Claudio Borghi of the League and Lucio Malan of FdI has greatly contributed).
The idea of monitoring citizens' habits, and introducing reward/punishment systems related to health care, is not only completely contrary to our constitutional principles, but seems to be inspired by axioms typical of totalitarian states. It is no coincidence that it is in single-party China that the model of the so-called "social license," which is based on pervasive forms of control of citizens' behavior even in their private sphere, with undue and severe restrictions on their personal freedom, has been established in recent years.
One could trace these dangerous illiberal drifts back to the concept of the ethical state that from Hobbes to Hegel ploughed through 19th century philosophical thought and contributed on the level of political theory to the birth of some of the worst totalitarian regimes in history. But such a connection seems frankly forced; the complexity of that thought and those political systems, and their tragic impact on 20th century history, have in fact little to do with the phenomenon before us. In fact, the true origins of this new methodology of government, based on control and pedagogical prescription, must be found in the new role that the political class has been induced to assume throughout the West. Affected by the heavy work of delegitimization that has characterized the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall and has involved our country in particular, thanks to the judicial investigations of Mani Pulite and the subsequent media campaigns against the so-called "caste," the political class has gradually lost consensus and reputation, while it has gradually seen increasing shares of power taken away from it through the ever-increasing expansion of the competencies of supranational bodies (EU, UN, WHO).
The "reeducation" of citizens as a new dimension of politics
The shift from policymakers to executors of strategies almost always devised elsewhere has been experienced with favor, and even enthusiasm, by supporters of external constraint, mostly located in the progressive left, while in the area of the center-right, more sensitive to the issue of national sovereignty, there has been some resistance, which, however, has not produced concrete results.
In March 2020, when faced with the emergence of the pandemic emergency, the Minister of Health explained, not without a good dose of smugness, that he would not make decisions but would simply carry out the indications of the Scientific Technical Committee ("We will follow the science"). This was not quite the case; on the contrary, the government made very specific choices at that juncture, as later published documents and the minutes of the STC itself showed. And yet, the choice to formally delegate such high-impact decisions to a technical body made it clear to all how the involution of the political class had now matured. Once the responsibility for certain choices had been offloaded onto "science," politicians and local administrators were left with the task of enacting and enforcing the restrictive measures, often bordering on the persecutory, to be inflicted on citizens. And it must be said that many of them exercised these tasks with zeal and tenacity worthy of a better cause, as if they had finally found the full realization of their innermost dreams. Supported by a press totally subservient to the emergencyist verbiage, some regional presidents and many mayors, however, have not limited themselves to the implementation of the measures issued by the government and the enactment of those within their own jurisdiction, but have largely overstepped the boundaries of their role, turning themselves into modern Savonarolas, devoted to a diuturnal blaming of citizens' behavior and in the threat of increasingly harsh penalties. Inspired by a kind of pedagogical-authoritarian moralism, and armed with new sanctioning powers related to the pandemic emergency, invited again and again into TV lounges, they have experienced a real moment of glory, which they find very hard to archive once the emergency is over.
And the themes of Agenda 2030 seem in that sense the perfect terrain to continue, with a few adjustments, to wear the shoes of whipping up others' mores. Climate change, lack of resources for health care, inclusiveness and anti-discrimination goals are all ideal opportunities to implement proposals that impact the lives of citizens, of course in the name of the common good and saving the planet. And so here we have the dystopian campaigns for "zero risk" on the roads, with the demented 30 km/h speed limits, measures that are in themselves completely irrational and invisible to at least 80 percent of citizens. But they become all the more unbearable as they are accompanied by the rhetorical preachings of those who put them in place, who never fail to deplore the Italians' poor sense of civic duty and their tendency to disregard the rules (clichés, the latter, which have found a resounding denial precisely in the pandemic period).
Proposals such as that of Councillor Bertolaso, real "Overton windows" wide open, should ultimately be opposed precisely because they are a symptom of a neo-totalitarian ideological drift that, in the name of safeguarding health, safety, and the environment, aims to make permanent the emergency model experienced during the pandemic, with undue and unjustifiable restrictions on people's rights and freedoms.
A graduate in Law (University of Rome "La Sapienza"), after a brief experience as a civil servant in the Ministry of Labour, he was a parliamentary adviser in the Chamber of Deputies for more than 30 years.
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