In mid October, the 66-year-old man visited the Metropolitan Community Clinic of Hellenikon with severe chest pains and other symptoms. The clinic is a charity staffed by volunteers who aim to fill the gap left by social welfare cuts by providing free healthcare services to uninsured citizens unable to access the national system. After performing an x-ray and other tests the organization determined that the man required immediate hospital care with cancer an almost certain diagnosis.
Having lost his job in the private sector more than a year ago, the man was not insured (in Greece, those who are unemployed for more than a year lose their public health insurance). George Vichas, the cardiologist who runs the Hellenikon clinic, told ThePressProject International that he personally contacted administrators at numerous hospitals in Athens but all of them replied that they were unable to admit the patient unless he could pay his medical bills.
On December 9th the group issued a public call to Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis highlighting the plight of the man and nine other seriously ill patients and demanding their immediate hospitalisation. However they received no response for several weeks and on the 30th of December the 66-year-old passed away.
The Community Clinic called on citizens again to petition the government to allow the hospitalisation of the remaining patients with life-threatening conditions, of whom the group says eight require cardiothoracic surgery.
Following this latest call, the ministry appears to have relented and today announced that it would admit the nine uninsured patients into public hospitals for treatment.
However the case is just one instance highlighting how, due to the healthcare reforms implemented as a result of the politics of austerity, many Greeks are unable to access basic medical services with potentially life-threatening consequences, despite assurances from the ministry of health that the truly needy would be exempt from the need to pay. According to the Community Clinic of Hellenikon which services just one area of Athens, last year they had over 17,500 visits from people unable to afford public hospitals and basic supplies such as baby food.
On January 1st, only two days after the 66-year-old died after having been denied treatment for his cancer, the latest healthcare “reform” came into force, establishing a 25 euro fee for any patient to be admitted to a public hospital. The measure has triggered strong public reactions and protests from within the parties of the coalition government as critics claim it will seriously restrict access to basic health services for thousands of patients who cannot afford to pay the fee.
Doctor Vichas went further calling the new measure “immoral” saying, “It is totally unacceptable that a European country even tolerates the idea of citizens who are uninsured. It is the obligation of the state, of the government to provide all citizens with basic health services.”
Doctor Vichas told TPPI that he personally raised the issue with Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, but the minister was inflexible. “I was stunned to see that the minister lives in a separate world. He could not grasp the reality that we experience every day in our clinic; that there are many people around us who cannot afford to pay those 25 euros.”