EU austerity measures are destroying Greek healthcare:
As the head of Greece’s largest oncology department, Dr. Kostas Syrigos thought he had seen everything. But nothing prepared him for Elena, an unemployed woman whose breast cancer had been diagnosed a year before she came to him.
By that time, her cancer had grown to the size of an orange and broken through the skin, leaving a wound that she was draining with paper napkins. “When we saw her we were speechless,” said Dr. Syrigos, the chief of oncology at Sotiria General Hospital in central Athens. “Everyone was crying. Things like that are described in textbooks, but you never see them because until now, anybody who got sick in this country could always get help.”
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Life in Greece has been turned on its head since the debt crisis took hold. But in few areas has the change been more striking than in health care. Until recently, Greece had a typical European health system, with employers and individuals contributing to a fund that with government assistance financed universal care. People who lost their jobs received health care and unemployment benefits for a year, but were still treated by hospitals if they could not afford to pay even after the benefits expired.
Things changed in July 2011, when Greece signed a supplemental loan agreement with international lenders to ward off financial collapse. Now, as stipulated in the deal, Greeks must pay all costs out of pocket after their benefits expire.
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The health care system itself is increasingly dysfunctional, and may worsen if the government slashes an additional $2 billion in health spending, which it has proposed as part of a new austerity plan aimed to lock down more financing. With the state coffers drained, supplies have gotten so low that some patients have been forced to bring their own supplies, like stents and syringes, for treatments.
Hospitals and pharmacies now demand cash payment for drugs, which for cancer patients can amount to tens of thousands of dollars, money most of them do not have.
Again, if these were Americans being deprived of healthcare because of the 'international scandal' of a cruel, callous profit-driven healthcare system, the German press would be dripping with (possibly sincere) outrage and empathy (g), and would know exactly where to point the finger. Yet in Germany, coverage of the Greek healthcare collapse virtually always attributes it vaguely to 'the crisis' in general, not to the austerity measures forced on Greece by the troika, which are anything but inevitable (or alternativlos in Merkel's infamous phrase) and to which there are plenty of reasonable alternatives that would not impose massive suffering on ordinary citizens. Atrios sums it up well: "None of this has anything to do with helping Greece, it's only about helping the people who lent money to Greece. And in the end it won't even help them. Needless suffering because austerity."
Yet in Germany, coverage of the Greek healthcare collapse virtually always attributes it vaguely to 'the crisis' in general, not to the austerity measures forced on Greece by the troika,
And austerity is not a better explanation. If expensive medication is a massive problem there exists a cost-cutting method: Enact laws that permit royalty-free copying of medical ingredients. Than Greece's industry could supply cheap compounds for the home market. But this measure is obviously nothing that any outside party can impose on Greece. Greek lawmakers have to decide.
which are anything but inevitable (or alternativlos in Merkel's infamous phrase) and to which there are plenty of reasonable alternatives
If there are better alternatives, why does no one come up with any ever?
Absent any concrete alternative plans I agreee with Merkel: There is no alternative. Think of it - if Greece does not implement any cost-saving mechanism now it will run into bankruptcy which implies austerity, because all (potential) lenders would defect.
http://linkepower.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/armut-macht-krank-besuch-in-einer-mobilen-klinik-im-suden-der-usa/
Your leftist media references are found in increasingly dirty fringes from week to week.
Posted by: Cuneiform | October 28, 2012 at 12:36 PM