Italy's health service faces new shake up

Italy's public sector health workers, including doctors, were planning a traditional Italian welcome for their new health minister, Raffaele Costa: a strike, on 1 July. The one day stoppage, with emergency and essential services ostensibly guaranteed, has been called over pay rather than in reaction to the new government. But it highlights the principal consideration facing Mr Costa as he prepares to apply to the health sector the free market remedies for which most Italians voted last March. At a general election that effectively buried the corruption stained parties that had ruled the country since the 1940s, voters handed victory to a rightist alliance formed by the television and property …