Just when the austerity-ravaged people of Greece thought things couldn’t get any worse for them, their universal healthcare system is dismantled and turned into an American-style death system. As the New York Times reports this week, the Greek healthcare system that ensured coverage for all of its citizens before the financial crisis hit has today been completely decimated by Conservative technocrats and austerity-pushers.
During the times I’ve been to Greece over the years, their Socialist economy has been something of a running joke. Inefficient, inept, lethargic, and seemingly built to stay that way, the Greek system still managed to provide one thing that America still can’t be bothered to impart: universal health care. In Greece, one could obtain necessary health care regardless of employment status or the contents of their wallet, something not possible here in the Land of Opportunity ©.
Then came the Great Recession, or more accurately, “The world after corporate gangsters schtupped the global economy.” Greece, never an economic power during the best of times, saw it’s rickety economic house of cards collapse. In order to be bailed out by the European Community, Greece had to agree to a number of crushing austerity measures, which, as inevitably happens in such cases, meant that those most adversely impacted are the poor, the sick, and the elderly. Greek politicians (few of whom have to worry about where their next souvlaki is coming from, decided the country could no longer afford to finance the social contract that had been the hallmark of Greek society for generations. No, the new economic realities and the New Austerity meant that it was now everyone for themselves. Universal healthcare was a luxury Greece could no longer afford, and so in the name of fiscal prudence those least able to care for themselves were left to find their own way. As one might imagine, the horrors stories abound; people are dying because they can’t afford treatement for conditions easily managed if caught early, people dying because they can’t afford medicine, etc.
[W]hile Conservatives here tout our healthcare system as the best in the world - even though every international study disproves this claim - the Greek people are horrified with that they now have to deal with: Americanized healthcare.
As Dr. Kostas Syrigos, the head of Greece’s largest oncology department told the Times, “We are moving to the same situation that the United States has been in, where when you lose your job and you are uninsured, you aren’t covered.”
Today, that’s the case for roughly half of Greece’s 1.2 million long-term unemployed workers….
The same is true in the United States right now where being unemployed and being sick is literally a death sentence in the American healthcare system. As a 2009 study by Harvard University found, 45,000 Americans die every single year because they lack health insurance.
Greeks, who remember the advantages of universal health care, are hitting the streets to demand an end to the New Austerity. Here in America, we’ve been lulled by Conservatives into believing that our Third World health care delivery system is the best in the world. In both countries, people continue dying for lack of money and/or health insurance, all while Conservatives continue to deny the truth.
It seems we have much in common with Greece these days. If the most powerful economic system in the world can’t be bothered to guarantee health care for ALL citizens, regardless of the size of their wallet, what claim do we have to the moral high ground? And what claim can be credibly made for “American Exceptionalism?” What’s so exceptional about Americans dying for lack of money and/or health insurance?
Ayn Rand would be SO proud….
