Crans Montana, who will pay the medical expenses of our injured compatriots? Italy-Switzerland tension

Position also reiterated by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. ”It seems to me that it is obvious that we do not pay” the healthcare costs of the children injured at ‘Le Constellation’. “The responsibility lies solely with those who managed that place and with those who did not carry out the checks…”.

Switzerland’s request

The president of the Valais Council of State Mathias Reynard confirmed, during a meeting with the Italian ambassador in Bern, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, that there is no legal margin for direct assumption of healthcare costs linked to Italian citizens injured in the New Year’s Eve tragedy in Crans-Montana. “We have no margin from a regulatory point of view to bear these expenses“, he explained, clarifying that the management will follow the procedure established by the Swiss system through the common KVG institution. This was reported by Corriere del Ticino.

According to reports, it will in fact be the KVG that will establish “which insurance covers which service”, with the involvement of the Italian insurance counterparties. Switzerland will therefore not proceed with a direct reimbursement of the invoices, while any residuals can only be covered on a residual basis at the cantonal level. “Except for the residual ones, there are no possibilities of direct intervention”, Reynard would have specified, who however indicated the need for coordination with Bern for a possible bilateral solution, in compliance with the principle of reciprocity with the Canton of Valais.

Lawyer for injured family members: “Request for reimbursement of medical expenses in Italy is unacceptable”

“Switzerland will request reimbursement of medical expenses from Italy” writes the lawyer Fabrizio Ventimiglia in a note, representing the family members of one of the young people injured in the New Year’s Eve fire in Crans Montana. “We learn this with shock! If the point is really that ‘this is the law’, then that law must be changed and quickly.” “It is frankly unacceptable that, in the face of a tragedy of this magnitude, we can even just hypothesize that it is the Italian citizens, or indirectly the Italian State, who are responsible for the, exorbitant to put it mildly, healthcare costs incurred in Switzerland – adds the lawyer -, here we are not faced with an ordinary hospitalization, but with the consequences of a very serious event in relation to which, according to the initial findings of the investigations, profiles of failure to comply with safety regulations at multiple levels would emerge”.

“Turning all of this into a game between health systems is a stretch that neither stands up legally nor, above all, on the level of equity”, underlines the lawyer according to whom “those who have the duty to guarantee safety, and do not do so, cannot limit themselves to coldly applying an accounting rule. They must fully assume, even economically, the consequences of what has happened”.