What's right with Italy

A lot, actually.

I'm not just talking about the "lifestyle," which in the American imagination consists of sitting around cafes in the town piazza, drinking a lovely little local wine and watching the colorful old characters play bocce or bitch about whatever political party is in power.

And it's certainly not about gaping at Great Art in a church where no one goes to pray any more.

Italians are great complainers, always bitching about their politicians (with good reason), prices and taxes, the EU, illegal immigrants, the weather, the fate of the local soccer team and all the normal things people bitch about. 

But let's consider a couple of things that I've heard and observed lately.

First, as I flew from Verona to Naples today, I saw from 20,000 feet a prosperous, well-organized country with beautiful highways, neat, well-tended fields and groves, well-maintained towns and cities.  I saw snow in the higher mountains of the Appenines all the way to Naples, a range of climates and landscapes that dictated the agriculture and organization of life in each little zone.  Even in Naples, a chaotic wreck of a city that reminded me, more than most over here, of a run-down American city, I saw tremendous energy and vitality, wit and the striving desire to survive and survive well. 

Yes, even in ramshackle old Naples I saw plenty of evidence of lives lived well and fully, with good humor and tolerance and joy.  There is something very right in Italy, no matter what the political junkies think or say. (NB:  A wonderful poster in Naples says, in a hugely ironic echo of the death of John Paul II, "Berlusconi Santo Adesso!" [Make Berlusconi a Saint Now!].)

Secondly, I think of a conversation we had last evening with a lovely signora in Valpolicella.  This lady had lived in the United States for over twenty years and became very American in the process.  She was talking about the health system in Italy.  "It's really very good, no matter what people in America say.  No matter what people in Italy say."  She cited her example, where she had had cancer some time ago.  Now, when she goes for any sort of testing or medication related to that incident, she pays nothing.  Not a cent.  In the US, she'd be part of a high-risk pool and pay through the nose.  Here, she could easily pay about 2000 US dollars for private, supplementary insurance.  Per year, not per month.  But she doesn't.  She doesn't feel the need.

"The care you get is wonderful and attentive.  They treat you well.  You get everything you need.  I can't imagine what it would be like if I still lived in Chicago."

She mentioned the hard-working woman who works for her.  This lady and her husband, immigrants from South America, make a very modest amount between them.  They have two sons.  And they pay next to nothing in co-pays for meds, and the health care they receive for themselves and their boys is virtually free.   Yes, taxes are relatively high.   But they have the mental and financial security of knowing that every health eventuality will NOT destroy them and cause them to lose their home.  How many Americans have the same surety?  Not so many these days.  Fewer and fewer.

So.  Aside from the pleasure of sitting for hours at a cafe in a picturesque piazza, there are indeed many things that are very right about Italy.  This realization can be painful for Americans, at least for the ones who are attentive to the gross inefficiencies and inequalities of our current setup.  This somehow less serious, less...IMPORTANT country manages to accomplish something that we, with all our vaunted might and wealth, seem unable to do.  There is something very wrong with this picture.  And the wrongness isn't here in industrious, earnest Italy.

 

Comments

[Marco]

2,000 a year in the USA might get you covered for hang nails, maybe.

[Terence Dominic]

If it isn't a pre-existing condition.

It's truly fucked up, isn't it?

[Allyson]

I know of a couple who live in a rent controlled apartment in mid town Manhattan and who live comfortably, both on long-term disability. They come and go as they please.

They travel well, and frequently, and have figured out how to work within the American system.

They get their trash picked up regularly and they have access to cheap and regular public transportation.

I couldn't imagine any folks like that damning a system they benefit so well from.

[Terence Dominic]

Oddly enough, Allyson, they pay through the nose for health care, and besides, they sympathize with the many millions who are far less privileged than they. Their cleaning lady, for example, whose son was murdered by drug dealers (oops, a mistake, our bad), owes a fortune in health bills for her thyroid cancer and will never dig herself out from under the debt. In Italy it would be one less worry for a person who has no insurance and a constant fear of dispossession.

Perhaps you have lived too long in G. W. Bush country, sweetie.

[Allyson]

I don't live in G.W Bush country. But it was real nice of them to keep that lady cleaning their toilets.

[Terence Dominic]

So you say. I hear he's moving to your nabe. Maybe you can ask him for a cup of oil.

She irons too.

[maurdel]

I wonder what are the comparative percentages of lucky Americans that have access to "cheap and regular public transportation" and the numbers of Italians or in fact all Europeans.

Everyone keeps saying the Europeans pay so much more for gasoline, but as I see it, they have much more access to alternative transportation.

[justine]

here's the thing, it's not Italy;s healthcare system per se that's so fab,it's a Yurp thing. Wherever you are in Yurp you get pretty much the same standard of pretty much free medical care.(Actually, Italy's is not free, even at point of use, as there is something called 'ticket' whereby you have to pay for certain treatments, day surgeries , medicines , etc, or at least contribute to them, income allowing). Everyone whinges but really, you get a sysyem with hiccoughs, but the digestion works.
Italy , in general, is a nick on the dial from being toast. It is, culturally, highly individualistic - great for families, entrepreneurs and the wealthy. But there is little community outside the family (and that's crumbling as an institution), entrepreneurs are suffocated by corruption and red tape, and the wealthy operate a closed shop. And these negatives are gift-wrapped by the state, who is largely ignored or disdained by the populace...thusly evryone has their own little bubble, inside of which they can be immune to the stifled economy around them. Spain is now ahead of Italy...

[Terence Dominic]

Except for the corruption working against entrepreneurs part, it doesn't sound all that different from home sweet home. Which, lest Allyson and everyone forget, is sort of the point. Except that the average person isn't left quite so coldly to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. Italian health care may not be "free" but it doesn't send families to living in their cars or sleeping all night on subways, which, trust me, happens in the U.S. of A. When I taught in the Bronx, there were plenty of those families with kids somehow dressed in their parochial school uniforms and doing their homework on the subway car floors. Yeah, it's a great system.