This is what happens when you don't take action to save what you can of your entitlements. But that could never happen here. We're special somehow. Everything will magically continue forward even when we get to the point that we cannot pay our debts. Forward to the insolvency then the Revolution! It's worked so well for everyone else.
Greece's rundown state hospitals are cutting off vital drugs,
Check. Already happening in the U.S.
limiting non-urgent operations and rationing even basic medical materials for exhausted doctors as a combination of economic crisis and political stalemate strangle health funding.
With Greece now in its fifth year of deep recession, trapped under Europe's biggest public debt burden and dependent on international help to keep paying its bills, the effects are starting to bite deeply into vital services.
"It's a matter of life and death for us," said Persefoni Mitta, head of the Cancer Patients' Association, recounting the dozens of calls she gets a day from Greeks needing pricey, hard-to-find cancer drugs. "Why are they depriving us of life?"
We could ask the same question, probably about the same drugs, here in the U.S. Obamacare is already having an impact.
Greece, a member of the euro zone that groups some of the richest nations on earth, has descended so far that drugmakers are even working on emergency plans to keep medicines flowing into the country should it crash out of the currency bloc.
The emergency has grown out of a tangle of unpaid bills, with pharmacists and doctors complaining of being unable to pay suppliers until competing health insurers clear a growing backlog of unfilled state payments.
Check.
Greece imports nearly all its medicines and relies heavily on patented rather than cheaper generic drugs, making it vulnerable to a funding squeeze that would grow sharply worse if it were forced out of the euro after elections on Sunday.
Long queues have been forming outside a handful of pharmacies that still provide medication on credit - the rest are demanding cash upfront until the government pays up a subsidy backlog of 762 million euros, or nearly $1 billion.
"We're not talking about painkillers here - we've learned to live with physical pain - we need drugs to keep us alive," Mitta, a petite former marathon runner and herself a cancer survivor, said in a voice shaky with emotion.
Greeks have long had to give medical staff cash "gifts" to ensure good treatment. Nevertheless the health system was considered "relatively efficient" before the crisis despite a variety of problems including a fragmented organization and excess bureaucracy, according to a 2009 report for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But it has been unable to respond to the growing crisis. The European Union and International Monetary Fund, which provided a 130 billion euro lifeline to Greece in March, have demanded big cuts to the system as part of a wider package of austerity measures.
But powerful medical lobbies and unions have resisted fiercely. Caretaker Prime Minister Panagiotis Pikrammenos, in office until a new government is formed after the elections, has pleaded for a solution but been powerless to force a change.
"It is imperative that this matter is resolved immediately in order to prevent putting people's lives at risk," Pikrammenos said last week.
BED SHEETS
Outside one of the 133 state hospitals - whose managers have sometimes been appointed as supporters of whichever political party was in power at the time - a banner put up by protesting staff reads "Hospitals Belong to the People". Inside, its gloomy labyrinth of corridors tell a different story.
A doctor at the university hospital in the northwestern Athens suburb of Chaidari cites a lack of basic examining room supplies in her own department, such as cotton wool, catheters, gloves and paper used to cover the examining table.
The shortage of paper, which is thrown out after each patient has used it, means corners have to be cut on hygiene.
"Sometimes we take a bed sheet instead and use it for several patients," said Kiki Kiale, a radiologist specializing in cancer screening. "It's tragic but there's no other solution."
Kiale, 52, said staff cutbacks and a lack of crucial equipment - including a digital mammography machine - meant some doctors were seeing 40 patients during a shift but many patients were still unable to get treatment.
In the chaos, patients can slip through the cracks or turn up for treatment again only when their illness has progressed too far for them to be saved.
"Some incidents are lost completely, others manage to return after a year but it's too late," said Kiale, who spent five years working in Britain's National Health Service (NHS), adding that the lack of stable government made the problem worse.
If Dr. Kiale worked for the NHS, he must be exquisitely familiar with that particular problem.
"Everyone is hiding behind the elections, behind political uncertainty. Everyone is hiding behind the crisis."
Elections last month produced a stalemate, with no party achieving a parliamentary majority or able to form a coalition.
Greeks vote again on Sunday to try to break the deadlock, with pro-bailout conservatives neck-and-neck with a radical leftist party SYRIZA which rejects the EU and IMF's austerity demands. This has raised the possibility that the lenders will cut off the financial lifeline and Greece will have to leave the euro zone if SYRIZA wins and manages to form a coalition.
Pharmaceutical industry sources say drugmakers have already discussed with European authorities how to keep Greece supplied with medicines should it have only new, radically devalued drachmas to pay for them.
They have been looking closely at the experience of Argentina's collapse in 2002, when some firms agreed to continue to supply medicines without payment for a while.
Greece's wider crisis, which has deprived it of a stable administration for months and absorbed official attention, has made it impossible to push through deep health reform and forced the government to resort to sticking-plaster measures.
The Health Ministry says the reports of shortages have been exaggerated and has promised to pay health suppliers 600 million euros from its own budget and that of finance ministry. However, this covers only existing arrears to March, leaving the period to June uncovered.
The IMF has said Greece needs to keep public health spending below 6 percent of GDP, down from around 10 percent at present and must sharply cut spending on pharmaceuticals which has surged over the past decade.
An aging, childless population will do that. Demographics is economy as well as destiny, it seems.
It says Athens must cut such spending by at least 2 billion euros from 2010 levels, a step that would bring the average public expenditure on outpatient pharmaceuticals to 1 percent of GDP by the end of this year.
"LITTLE ENVELOPES"
What effect such cuts will have on patient care is likely to be dramatic, especially without a wider reform of healthcare.
Even before the crisis, public hospitals were under strain and the notorious cash-filled "fakelaki" or "little envelope" which patients have had to hand over to get good treatment have become a byword for the corruption in the system.
Or we could look at it as an informal co-pay, claimed to reduce frivolous use of the medical system by forcing consumers to make each doctor visit a cost/benefit analysis.
As the crisis has bitten, ever more Greeks can no longer afford to pay. Rocketing unemployment has meant many have fallen behind with insurance contributions or have trouble paying the 10-25 percent of prescription costs not covered by the system.
"The health system has shut its door in their face," said Katerina Avloniti, a 27-year-old psychologist at a free medical clinic in Athens whose patients are no longer eligible to get a blood test, a cardiogram or a simple check up.
You are a charity, dear. You don't get to offer gold-plated Cadillac care, unless you can find a rich patron to foot the bill.
Housed on one floor of the Athens Medical Association, the clinic is staffed by volunteer cardiologists, general practitioners, dentists and physiotherapists who see about 60 people a day, relying on unused drugs donated by other patients.
"Most are on the verge of depression, others are thinking of suicide. Many are ashamed because until recently, they had a job," she said, adding that many of the patients are 25 to 30-year-olds who have not been able to find work.
Make work, then. Sell apples in the street, shine shoes, hawk Grandma's moussaka door to door -- everyone loves Grandma's moussaka. Or set up as a laundry for surgical bed sheets, clearly a new area of opportunity.
Avloniti said the crisis risked spiraling into a wider health emergency if treatment levels continued to fall. "Some people are walking timebombs - they could have a disease that is highly transmittable. We shouldn't close the door on them."
Continued on Page 47
#4
Anguper, I think you're gonna get the mods after you for that picture being too big. I suppose the message is that those kids were poor. Maybe the message is that's the way we're gonna be again. But at least those kids were U.S. citizens at a time when that really meant something.
I've edited the links to resize two overly-big photos inserted in photos today, including the one above.
Dear readers: if you are inserting links to pictures, please check that the img code includes a width= phrase. If the width is not specified or is greater than 300, please add the following within the angle brackets: width=300 . You'll know you're in the right place if you insert this after phrases like valign=top or align=right etc.
The mods are busy and don't always have time to fix things. Deleting an overly large picture is much quicker for us than editing things, so please take time to do this yourself.
#7
"Sometimes we take a bed sheet instead and use it for several patients," said Kiki Kiale, a radiologist specializing in cancer screening. "It's tragic but there's no other solution."
Tragic? A sheet instead of paper? Try getting a little perspective, doc.
People dying is tragic. People sharing a sheet for an exam table is inconvenient.
Idiot.
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/15/2012 22:15 Comments ||
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The Italian police have tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! ten people believed to have criminal masterminded a series of kabooms in Italia and other European countries, Press TV reports.
The operation was part of a joint police blitz in Italia, Germany and Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... on Wednesday against two anarchic and insurrectionist organizations known as FAI (Informal Anarchist Federation) and FRI (International Revolutionary Front) which led to the arrest of ten people.
The tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! members are accused of subversion as well as planning and executing bombings in a university in Milan in 2009 and another state-run center near the northern Italian town of Gorizia in 2011.
They have also been held responsible for the attacks against the Equitalia taxing agency in Rome, the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the Greek embassy in Gay Paree.
"Eight out of ten of the arrests were issued against people who were already in prison serving sentences for previous crimes. It is beyond speak that they are some of the criminal masterminds of the terrorist groups, those who genuinely orchestrate the strategies. FAI is a well-organized group which operates in networks all over Europe," Valeria Lupidi a sociologist and criminologist told Press TV.
It is not yet clear if the tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! people have been directly connected with the most recent terrorist attack in Italia in which a senior executive of the aerospace and defense company, Finmeccanica, was kneecapped in Genoa last month.
Given the recent spate of worrying and often conflicting reports of new terror threats targeting Italian and European cities, the chorus of alarm has left people a little confused about the political nature of FAI.
"Amid a time of economic struggle and deep uncertainty, people's resentment has to be expected and in a society this resentment can at times be expressed through anger and violence. Some media keep referring to FAI as a leftwing organization. This assumption is unacceptable. On what basis do they make this assumption?" Lupidi argued.
In a recent message posted on a website, FAI has threatened to disrupt the upcoming London Olympics with terrorist attacks in order to hurt Britannia's national image and paralyze the British economy.
[Iran Press TV] Spain will take its dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the Gibraltar Rock to the United Nations, Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs says, after the provocative projection of British Queen's giant image on the Rock earlier this week.
The image of the Queen was projected on the northern face of the rock next to Britain's flag on Tuesday night as the youngest son of the Queen and his wife visited the disputed Overseas British Territory as part of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
Reports said the image could be seen from miles across the border from Spain, where the Gibraltar Rock is located.
Spain said on Monday that Madrid considers the royals' visit with "disagreement and unease."
Now, in the wake of Gibraltar's provocative move, a spokesman at Spain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Spain's Ambassador to the UN will refer the sovereignty dispute to the UN Decolonization Committee on Friday to call for negotiations with Britain on the future of the roughly seven square-kilometer area.
"Spain will reiterate its position and talk about the how the situation has been developing in recent months," the spokesman told The Daily Telegrah.
"We will ask the UK to engage in conversation over sovereignty."
This comes as a source at the ministry also underlined Spain's outrage about the Queen's image move.
"We don't approve of what was obviously a symbolic show of sovereignty during a time when we should be working towards solving problems," the source said.
Britain invaded and captured Gibraltar in 1704 and Spain ceded its sovereignty to Britain nine years later as part of the treaty of Utrecht, yet the details of the treaty are a point of contention for both sides.
The UN Special Committee on Decolonization lists the name of the area alongside other British colonies, including Las Malvinas (Falklands) that should be decolonized.
#2
I wouldn't worry about it. The UK has veto power in the Security Council. The General Assembly can pass all the resolutions they want, but the only ones with "teeth" come from the Security Council.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/15/2012 7:55 Comments ||
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#3
Of course the UK could sponsor similar actions to champion the aboriginal rights of the Basques, citing their own actions with Scotland as a model for Madrid.
#6
Glad that all of Spain's other issues and problems have been cleared up so they can pick this fight
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/15/2012 11:50 Comments ||
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#7
Spain picks this fight because it hurts their national pride. And they don't have much left of it at this point. It is the only thing they can do to make themselves feel better about themselves.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
