The IMF calls reducing health expenditure

By Natasha N. Spagadorou

Because quite simply, the international organization, (which is one of three organizations that form the Troika), suggests the financial participation of patients in costs in order to reduce the demand for medical services, which is growing rapidly in the last 30 years, as estimates.

If someone takes into account of the growing aging population, it is easy to see that these costs will be rise even more in the future.
But Greece has nothing to do with the other western countries, because our country has already paid a heavy price in health spending in recent years and the citizens saw the rights which were built with great effort and race, to suddenly collapsing. Public expenditures have declined; private expenditures have also declined to a large extent, since people have no longer the income to pay out of their pocket.

As the assistant Professor of Health Policy at the University of Peloponnese, Mr. Kyriakos Souliotis, says, fiscal adjustment was violently in our country, so the GDP in four years have suffered losses of 100 billion dollars.

Moreover, when the International Monetary Fund talks about the financial participation of the patients should be aware that civil participation was increased dramatically for medicines, so the insured have to pay up to 60% more, in order to obtain the necessary treatment for their preparation.
It is worth noting that, as mentioned both Mr. Souliotis, and Mr. Lefteris Thireos, general secretary of the Medical Society of Athens, "the period 2007 - 2012, households suffered enormous damage because of the recession! And what is most evident is the fact that for the first time, our children receive worse quality of life, they suffer from galloping unemployment and from serious structural problems, especially for young people."

Among the reforms proposed by the IMF, in order to reduce the cost of medical services, is the emphasis on primary health care (PHC), the promotion and prevention, and the expansion of health information management systems.

Here really nobody knows whether to cry or laugh.

This is because our PHC looks aged and neglected, the doctors are reluctant to enter the system, resulting PHC to lacks basic medical specialties, so that citizens can not visit PHC and still visit the NHS which is now in suffocation.

At the same time, like all show and as stressed by Deputy Minister of Health, Mr. Leonidas Grigorakos, 1,000 family doctors, (which essentially are the "heart" of PHC), delay at work, and so this is another good reason for the fall-down of the system.

As for health promotion, we cannot speak for prevention, since the health care is so reduced, understaffed and underfunded and the money is not superfluous to reinforce prevention policy. The emphasis on prevention, however, can help to achieve significant savings in health systems in the future.
With regard to medical technology, it is a fact, (as we have noted many times in Newsbomb.gr), that Greece chase away the investors, both in the part of medical technology, and new innovative medicines.

Regardless of the alarm of the IMF, if Greece wants to be able to step on its feet, must escape from the narrow budgetary limits, which create suffocation to policyholders and have thrown health and care in Tartarus, mortgaging the future of health.

Source: onmed.gr