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Sunday 10 June 2012

Greek debt crisis: chronic drug shortage risking lives of the sick. Coming here soon ?


We have seen test strips being refused to diabetics and type two medications being banned from Doctors prescribing lists. The NHS is being dismantled and privatised. The failed European utopian experiment is close to total collapse, and in the US once prosperous middle class people are living in tents. Total financial Armageddon is coming our way soon, and life as we have known it is over. It may be time to start stock piling medication and tinned or dry food. Don’t think it can’t happen to us, most European banks are bankrupt as are many European countries. Start preparing for the unthinkable.
"In the Greece of today, a country gripped by economic collapse and paralysed by political uncertainty, more and more users of expensive medicines are finding a healthcare system that had problems even before the eurozone crisis hit is close to disaster. Medicine shortages, reported by Greek health workers and patients for months, show signs of worsening as pharmaceutical companies become increasingly reluctant to deliver drugs on credit to a state whose debts to them are predicted to top €1.5bn by the end of this month. Public hospitals, which have had budgets cut by 40% over the past two years of austerity, do not have the money to stock all the drugs they are expected to, and struggle to pay suppliers – even as demand for their services increases.

But the problem does not stop there. Even if the medicines are theoretically available, they are not always accessible. Commercial pharmacies, which claim they are owed €540m by the EOPYY, the main state health insurance fund, are insisting customers pay up front for medicines. For many residents of a country in its fifth year of recession, that is simply not possible. State pharmacies providing the most expensive drugs for free or at a fraction of the cost do exist – but there are only 10 in the whole of Greece.
Konstantinos Lourantas, chair of the Parmacists' Association of the Attica region in and around the capital, announced on Thursday that his group was opening a bank account into which philanthropic individuals could make donations for expensive drugs. But pharmacists, he added, could not continue "replacing the state".

"Iain Duncan Smith and senior Liberal Democrat ministers including Nick Clegg have called for the better-off not to receive universal benefits, which include free bus passes and prescriptions.
In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, Saga, Age UK and the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) warn that such a move would be unfair and likely to leave those most in need worse-off.
Ministers have not specified the income level above which pensionerswould be blocked from receiving such benefits, but campaigners fear it could be as low as £132.60 a week – the threshold at which the pension credit takes effect.
This could mean that as many as nine million people would lose universal benefits, which include a £10 bonus at Christmas and free eye tests"

Have a nice day !

Eddie


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well - have a nice day, will try, am just off to a nice Sunday lunch with the family. Not sure if I'll use these thoughts over Sunday lunch but I have to agree it is bad out there, my dear old uncle keeps on about 'this is uncharted territory' and he is not sure where it will all end. Will it be as you see it here?
I'm no expert but then neither are the so called experts.

Ah well I will try and have a nice day!

Sheila

fibreclaireUK said...

I remember my grandmother telling me about health 'care' for the poor before the NHS. I see it coming back to that soon. Truly a return to Victorian Values as stated by Tories in the 80's

Anonymous said...

I try and have the 'British Bulldog' spirit about all this but I don't like the look of things right now either.

Simon