Despite a promise of “complete and fair coverage of health care for everyone for free,” the Greek state-controlled system is broken and corrupt, the Athens daily ekathimerini.com reports. Predictably, Greeks have taken it upon themselves to build a private health care sector:
Despite hikes in Greece’s health spending between 2000 to 2008 being among the highest of all OECD countries, this has not been matched by growing life expectancy rates, the report added. Turning to the hospital system, corruption has grown due to poorly run operations and an improper organisation structure with about one in five Greeks admitting to having paid a bribe in order to receive medical treatment at a state hospital. These problems have contributed to growth in the private healthcare industry which provides crucial services but also enjoys the benefit of not having any competition, the report added.
In the UK, the National Health Service has been using hospital beds as housing for senior care, to the detriment of people who actually need hospital beds. From the Telegraph:
If current trends continue, almost 100,000 of 170,000 NHS beds will end up being filled by elderly people who are well enough to be in residential care. This will cost the health service millions of pounds and throw its day-to-day operations into chaos, says the report by Bupa, the health insurance and care provider. It blames the looming crisis on a “17-year legacy of under-funding in the care home sector”. The next few years will see the problem getting progressively worse, the report’s authors predict, despite a Coalition pledge that local authorities will have an extra £2 billion to spend on adult social care over the next four years.
For more on this issue, see Acton’s Health Care resource page.
