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How the Euro debt collectors are killing Greeks by taking away their medicines

published by Tom Sullivan on Sun, 2012-05-27 10:05

Greek pharmacists staged a one-day strike protesting the fact that the government owes them EU1 billion, which has created major shortages of medicines, which are killing Greeks. They say that this has caused an “emergency situation” in which cancer and cardiac patients are in a panic because they cannot get the medications, either because they can no longer afford them or because they simply are not available.

“I give it 15 days. If the European Union doesn’t release the loans it has promised by then, there will be scenes of utter chaos here,” said Dimitris Karageorgiou, secretary general of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association. “The situation will become dramatic. Already we have cancer sufferers going from hospital to hospital to try and find drugs, because no one can afford to stock them,” he said. “If the shortages get worse, God knows what we will see.” Since the bailout started, he said “120 pharmacies have closed in Athens alone because of pressures from delays in payments for prescriptions from social security funds.

Whatever you read about shortages is little. There are about 300 medicines that are no longer readily available. It’s tragic.”  “The situation with anti-cancer drugs is out of control, but what can we do?” one pharmacist said. “Because we’re not being reimbursed, we can’t pay suppliers, who can’t pay the companies. It’s a chain effect.”

Under orders from the EU-ECB-IMF Troika, Athens amalgamated within months 13 social security funds into one body, the National Organization for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY), which has had the effect allowing the government to centrally control the disbursement — in reality, non-disbursement — of funds.

“Record unemployment and mass emigration has meant that there is very little money coming into the funds,” Karageorgiou said. “You tell me. How can a pensioner, surviving on little more than 400 euros a month, afford cancer medications that cost 380 euros?”

There is great fear that if Greece is forced out of the euro, it will not be able to pay for medicines, and already pharmaceutical companies are preparing emergency measures. 

With suicides among desperate ill and elderly becoming almost commonplace, a 90-year-old woman and her 60-year-old son committed suicide together by jumping off a high building, holding hands as they jumped. The son, who was a musician, had left a note on a blog, saying he not only could not afford care for his mother, but did not even have enough money to eat. Part of the note was a poem denouncing those responsible for the crisis and saying that the suicide was an act of defiance, because they did not want to be further degraded.

Last month, the entire nation was outraged when 77-year-old pensioner Dimitris Christoulas took his life in Syntagma Square, leaving a note  saying he could no longer afford to live, and was committing suicide as an act of resistance.

Source: LaRouche Irish Brigade, 25 May 2012

Tags: 
BANKING
GREECE
MURDER
IMF
EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
AUSTERITY
NEO-FEUDALISM

Comments

Submitted by Heydrich on Sun, 2012-05-27 15:21.

[1] IMF head Christine LaGarde collects a base salary of $467,960 per year, plus $83,760 per year for “living expenses,” plus a massive expense account she uses for “entertaining.”

LaGarde plainly says she has no sympathy for her Greek victims, and that the Greek masses can expect (and deserve) a forever-increasing siege of debt and banker-imposed austerity. She says Greeks are to blame for their agony, since average Greeks don’t pay enough taxes. She says average Europeans have had it too good for too long, and now it’s “payback time” to the bankers.

And the masses believe it!

Asked whether she is able to ignore the fact that banker austerity is literally killing people in Greece (because average Greeks cannot pay for care or drugs), LaGarde says, “I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.”

If you think I am exaggerating, you can read LaGarde’s words yourself…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/payback-time-lagarde-greeks  

It’s an ever-worsening spiral. The bankers demand austerity, which shrinks the tax revenue. Then the bankers blame their victims, saying the victims must have more austerity and higher taxes.

Fortunately, almost all European politicians are directly on the bankers’ payroll. So are most media shills. (Advertising revenue is down because of the Depression, but bankers create money out of thin air, and use it to prop up the big media outlets that spout nothing but lies – which the masses believe are truth.)

[2] Germans like to vilify Greece. Germans are supremely corrupt. Because German bankers have Greek politicians on their payroll, the bankers sell massive quantities of arms to Greece (on credit) that Greece does not want or need. Greek politicians take a cut of the proceeds, and all the debt is dumped onto the Greek masses in the form of ever-worsening austerity.

Germany and Switzerland also have a near-monopoly on European pharmaceuticals. They are using the Depression to rake in record profits. Meanwhile average people die.

Such horrendous scams are what keep the German and French economy going. The French and Germans sell garbage to their victims – on credit – and get paid via austerity, which extracts wealth from the victim nations.

And the masses worldwide blame average Greeks.

[3] “There is great fear that if Greece is forced out of the euro, it will not be able to pay for medicines, and already pharmaceutical companies are preparing emergency measures.”

See how it works? Bankers impose the euro straightjacket, and Greek politicians maintain it, since the politicians are on the bankers’ payroll.  Thus, average Greeks die because they cannot buy medications. The bankers and the corrupt Greek politicians (and the corporate media everywhere) say that if Greece breaks free of the euro-straightjacket that is destroying Greece, then Greece will be destroyed.

And the masses believe it!

[4] “A 90-year-old woman and her 60-year-old son committed suicide together by jumping off a high building, holding hands as they jumped. The son could not afford care for his mother, or afford to feed himself.”

Bankers say that average Greeks are suffering because average Greeks are not suffering enough. Greeks must have more austerity. Greeks don’t have enough money to buy a crust of bread, but Greeks must pay more in taxes to the bankers and speculators.

And the masses believe it!

[5] Incidentally, some of the most idiotic trash anywhere is in the supposedly “sophisticated” financial blogs. Most people believe the bankers’ lies, and blame the bankers’ victims. Among the masses, only one person in five (at most) has the slightest clue about reality. This applies to a broad range of topics.

Submitted by Tom Sullivan on Mon, 2012-05-28 13:23.

“I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.”

I somehow doubt this despicable permatanned bitch has anything on her mind other than her own self interest. I won't be happy until her and her ilk are all swinging from nooses.

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