Four years of a recession and two years of wide-ranging cuts to the state budget to reduce expenditure and balance accounts is turning health care in Greece into more of a luxury for the privileged few.
With public health care spending at around 10 billion euros, 25% less than in 2009, staying healthy ”risks becoming a privilege,” said Haralambos Economou, who teaches Sociology at Athens’ Panteion University. Two years of harsh austerity have led to over a million officially unemployed people in Greece, over 20% of the workforce. Sector experts say that up to 10% of the population, when in need of treatment, are now forced to dip into their steadily-diminishing savings.
In the past, most Greeks (whenever possible) made use of private healthcare facilities, even if they had to pay almost 40% of the total treatment costs out of their own pockets, one of the highest rates in developed countries. Now, however, the demand for treatment in public hospitals has risen by 20-30%, with expenditure once again falling on a state system already suffering due to a cut in costs.
However, even worse, many people try to get round the system and reduce costs by showing up at the emergency room in order to get immediate treatment instead of requesting an appointment in advance for which they would need to pay. Hospitals are trying to do their best to deal with the situation.
”After the recent reforms forced on us to request money from patients who are not covered by health insurance, more people avoid making appointments because they do not have the money for them,” said Dr. Meropi Manteou, specialist in Pneumology at Athens’ Sotiria hospital.
”They come here with the flu and try to pass it off as an emergency. We do what we can to help the poorest, but I don’t know how long we will be able to close a blind eye,” she adds.
However, the problems are not only for the less well off, with the situation now difficult even for those who have made contributions into the health care system for years. Due to the crisis, the health ministry has reduced the list of medicines and medical tests that can be reimbursed by the social security institute, which is going through a very difficult period due to bad past financial management as well as chronically low contributions, a problem now worse due to growing unemployment levels. Public hospitals are having to fight everyday against reduced financing, doctors’ salaries cut by a quarter, a chronic lack of nurses and no payment of overtime hours since December.
This is also a reason why many Greeks have begun to go to the center run by Doctors of the World NGO, which have been working in the country for over 20 years and which, until recently, worked almost exclusively with immigrants and emarginated groups.
”Since the end of 2010 more Greeks, and not only immigrants, are coming to us,” said Christina Samartzi, spokesperson of the NGO, adding, ”and now they number more than 100 per day, the people who are requesting assistance solely in Athens. This is a new phenomenon, and is a consequence of the economic crisis.”
Most Greeks requesting assistance from the NGO are unemployed, pensioners or families that can no longer afford the compulsory vaccinations for even their youngest children.
”We are seeing a lot of elderly people suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes who cannot buy the medicines that they need every month,” said Giorgos Papadakis, a young Diabetologist. ”They come to us and ask whether we can give it to them.”
But the worst thing, as many of the volunteers from the NGO confirmed, is that more Greeks are asking not only for medicine, but also for food.
(source: ANSA)
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