Health System Reflects Greece's Ills

by Charles Forelle

Wall Street Journal
November 12, 2011

A few years ago, George Gianakouras, a retired salesman of hotel supplies from the Greek port town of Volos, was feeling sluggish. His doctors diagnosed heart disease. He was given cardiac drugs and scheduled for angioplasty and stenting at a hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece's second city.

Like nearly all Greeks, Mr. Gianakouras was covered by a state social-security fund, which paid €10,000 ($13,600) for the hospital bill. There was one more thing: Mr. Gianakouras said he gave his surgeon "black money"—€5,000 in cash—to perform the operation.

"If you don't pay," he said, "you don't get anything done."

Greece's constitution obliges the state to provide health care to citizens. By and large, it does. But the system is a mess. It is stuffed with debt, plagued with corruption such as the bribes Mr. Gianakouras said he paid, and hobbled by inefficiency and inequity.

In many ways, the health-care system is a microcosm of Greece itself. Big debts in the public hospital system helped usher in Greece's financial crisis in 2009, and health care is now a key battleground as the country struggles to escape it.

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