We’ve seen a dramatic rise since September as the impact of extra taxes and the recession takes its toll on people’s income. “In some cases, we help people who simply don’t have enough money to pay a doctor to find out what’s wrong with them. “Lots more people are being shut out of the national health system because they are unemployed and uninsured and they can’t pay, or because their income has been slashed-as in the case of pensioners-and they don’t have enough money for medication,” he said. This year they account for about 30 percent. The group’s president, Nikitas Kanakis, said that last year that Greeks made up 8 percent of the patients his doctors treated at a medical center in Athens. One of these is the Greek branch of Doctors of the World, which normally sends volunteer medics to deprived areas of Africa and Asia but is now concentrating its efforts on treating people in Greece. However, thousands of other Greeks can no longer afford the cost of basic health care and are turning to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for assistance. The Health Ministry intervened in late November to ensure that pregnant women were not turned away from public hospitals if they could not pay in advance. Checks conducted this year by the Labor Inspectorate found that roughly three in 10 Greeks who are working are uninsured. It is not just those out of work who have to pay their medical bills themselves.
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Like Zachariadou, more than half of these people have been out of work for more than a year, meaning they do not have enough social-security credits to receive subsidized health care. The recession will be deeper and the public deficit larger than the Greek government and its international lenders, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, had forecast.Īlmost 900,000 people-a rate of 17.7 percent-are unemployed in Greece. Burdened with a crippling public debt of some €350 billion, Greece’s economy is about to complete a worse-than-expected year. It’s not the kind of money we have lying around.” In years gone by, the 33-year-old Athenian’s social-security fund would have picked up most of her hospital bill, but she has joined the growing ranks of Greece’s long-term unemployed who have no such coverage.Īs their country grapples with its economic problems, accessible and affordable health care is one of many things Greeks like Zachariadou can no longer take for granted.
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“You know, €900 is about three months’ rent.
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“My immediate thought on hearing about the hospital charges was, how am I going to have this baby?” Zachariadou said. Even more shocking to Zachariadou and other Greeks was the news that a number of hospitals had turned away pregnant women because they did not have the necessary cash. Pregnant mothers are advised to remain calm at all times, but Elli Zachariadou could not hide her shock a few weeks ago when she heard reports about women having to pay at least €900 up front in order to give birth at public hospitals.