The Greek Financial Crisis Affected The Public Health System

Public Health System

The Next issue I would like to discuss is how the Greek financial crisis affected the public health system. Healthcare in Greece is considered extremely important. In the years prior to the economic crisis, Greece was spending around 13.6 percent of its GDP on healthcare, which is adequate given that the average percentage spent on healthcare in the European Union at the time was around 15 percent. However, after the debt crisis hit and the extensive austerity measures were introduced, Greece had one of the lowest ratios in the European Union, not exceeding 11.5 percent in the year 2012. The bailout conditions required a reduction in the overall health expenditure as low as 9 percent of the country’s GDP, and to less than

Notably, in the same time frame, the public health expenditure fell by 4 billion euros. In particular, the MoUs required major cuts to hospital and pharmaceutical expenditure. Total public hospital sector expenditure decreased by 8 percent from 7 billion in the year 2009 to 6.4 billion in the year 2012. Pharmaceutical expenditure also decreased a whopping 32 percent, which equates to 2.1 billion euros. Public pharmaceutical expenditure experienced the largest reduction, at 43.2 percent from 5.2 billion in 2009 to 2.95 billion euros in 2012. Due to these numbers hospitals have to cut down on employees and even patients to afford the medical equipment that more sick patients need. With less and less money flowing into the country access to healthcare has become more and more difficult. Access to care, is an essential element in achieving quality life in Greece (Gopal, Anand. “What Austerity Looks Like Inside Greece.” The New Yorker, The New

The suicide rate has spiked since the depression began. When the harsh austerity measures were implemented on Greece, there was a significant increase in suicide rates following the years 2011 and 2012 in comparison to the period between 2003 and 2010. George Rachiotis, holding a MD and a PhD, and is an assistant professor of epidemiology and occupational hygiene in the University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece said “"In addition, we found that there was a significant correlation between suicide rates with an increase in unemployment in Greece, where unemployment has almost doubled [since 2009] and is now approaching 30%." By February 2012, 20,000 additional Greeks had been rendered homeless, and 20 percent of shops in the center of Athens were empty. The group most affected by the hard economic hits were working-aged men between 20 and 59 years of age, in whom the suicide rate increased from 6.56 to 8.81 per 100,000 population in 2011- 2012. From the study Dr Rachiotis and his team conducted, it was determined that each 1 percentage point rise of unemployment rates in men aged 20 to 59 was associated with a 0.19/100,000 population rise in suicide. What was particularly interesting in the study, is that Dr. Rachiotis found an increase in suicide rates in the over 65 years of age demographic. A few reasons for this can be because pensions