Posted on 02/28/2013 7:52:34 AM PST by blam
Panic In Greek Pharmacies As Hundreds Of Medicines Run Short
Elizabeth Sukkar and Helena Smith, The Guardian
February 28, 2013
Greece is facing a serious shortage of medicines amid claims that pharmaceutical multinationals have halted shipments to the country because of the economic crisis and concerns that the drugs will be exported by middlemen because prices are higher in other European countries.
Hundreds of drugs are in short supply and the situation is getting worse, according to the Greek drug regulator. The government has drawn up a list of more than 50 pharmaceutical companies it accuses of halting or planning to halt supplies because of low prices in the country.
More than 200 medicinal products are affected, including treatments for arthritis, hepatitis C and hypertension, cholesterol-lowering agents, antipsychotics, antibiotics, anaesthetics and immunomodulators used to treat bowel disease.
Separately, it was announced on Tuesday that the Swiss Red Cross was slashing its supply of donor blood to Greece because it had not paid its bills on time.
Chemists in Athens describe chaotic scenes with desperate customers going from pharmacy to pharmacy to look for prescription drugs that hospitals could no longer dispense.
The government list includes some of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi all said a few products had been withheld. GSK and AstraZeneca denied the claims.
"Companies are ceasing these supplies because Greece is not profitable for them and they are worried that their products will be exported by traders to other richer countries through parallel trade as Greece has the lowest medicine prices in Europe," said Professor Yannis Tountas, the president of the Greek drug regulator, the National Organisation for Medicines.
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Coming soon to a Walgreens near you...
Preppers ping alert.
BBBBut, but... I thought medical care was FREE in Greece...
The government is supposed to take care of everything...
And you believe I am fro the Government and I am here to help you....Because of Obamacare there are so many drug shortages it is unreal..more than I have every seen. and I have been in this field for 40 yrs....Copays have doubled on scripts and cost for the same policies have gone up...for the same coverage...They want to overload the insurance companies..so they will have to go out of business and the Gov. Exchanges will take over...that is when the death panels will start cutting back on surgical procedures and wha will be covered..population control
Sorry...I didn’t think my post required a sarcasm tag.
Greece was better off when the military junta was running things.
Socialism: what could go wrong?
Witness yet another example of the death troes of the bloated, regulatory Welfare State. Prices are too low, there are shortages, people panic and what does the government do? Draw up a list of companies to beat up on because they won’t sell drugs at a loss. The logical conclusion of the Welfare State is “give me everything you have for free.” As Margaret Thatcher stated, at some point you run out of other people’s money. They are there now in Greece and it ain’t pretty.
There is a way a US state can avoid this, but it takes some prior planning. The assumption is that the dollar has become very unstable.
Because a state can only issue currency backed by gold, the state needs to set up a company to issue a fiat alternative currency, under state licensing and monitoring, called ‘scrip’.
The biggest advantage of scrip to producers, retailers, and consumers is that it is a totally controlled currency. Prices are set once a month, and it works in a complementary manner to dollars, forcing it to stabilize.
Thus in unstable economic times it keeps both local markets and local government functional.
Scrip values are purchased with dollars or given in lieu of dollars, and it concentrates dollars at whoever is managing the scrip. And this is where pharmaceuticals come in.
Scrip favors locally produced products and services, but if something is not produced in a state, it has to be imported. So the scrip company also acts as a bulk purchasing agent, in this case buying huge amounts of pharmaceuticals with its dollars, hopefully at lower cost.
Thus it can keep a state’s pharmacies stocked when other states are running dry.
Death Panels in each store!
You mean we can’t just make everything free? Somebody actually has to pay for all this stuff?
Ran into unavailability a couple of weeks ago on a prescription ... pharmacy did not have it and could not get it.
Coming soon? It’s already happening.
Economists only know how to make two things: shortages and surpluses. Control the price of an item below the market price and you will have a shortage. Higher, a glut.
Greece has the lowest medicine prices in Europe.
Nice going.
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