Greek healthcare revisited: the other side of the story

It was with great interest that I read Guardian’s long op-ed “Patients who should live are dying’: Greece’s public health meltdown”. The article, correctly underlined the dramatic impact of prolonged ‘draconian’ austerity measures and policies which have greatly affected the Greek health system. Austerity in public health systems comes at a very high price. Especially if implemented in the form of horizontal, target-driven cuts, and not the result of thorough, well structured, strategic reforms of the problematic aspects of the health system – streamlining it, upping its efficiency and safeguarding the quality of services offered. Successive Greek governments gravely mismanaged public health policy and the social security system, exacerbating deficits, and, ultimately, shortages and deficiencies. The need for good governance, sound policy, targeted reforms and real time checks in public hospitals through a cutting-edge spending oversight mechanism is imperative. It could save the state €500 million euros annually, providing considerable space for improvements in the system. The Guardian article went on to highlight certain very alarming, yet isolated cases, which accentuate some of the major challenges that the Greek public health system has been grappling with in recent times.