Greek Referendum Poll

[Admiral Yi]

As a percentage of GDP Raz.

[Razgovory]

As a percentage of GDP Raz.

Okay, could you give me a good idea how many years the US was under "austerity" by your definition?

[Admiral Yi]

For what purpose?

[Syt]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/10/news/economy/greece-health-care-crisis/?sr=cnnitwr

Inside Greece's health care crisis

Fakelaki means "little envelope" in Greek. As in a little envelope full of cash, given to a doctor in exchange for good care.

Sadly, it's a staple of the country's health care system.

"There are some doctors, even public health care doctors, who directly ask for money," Maro Kouri said. "They ask before running tests, they ask when you are supposed to get your results back," she said.

Fortunately for Kouri, Evangelisimos hospital in Athens is the exception.

Kouri was with her father at Evangelisimos. The day before, he had what felt like a heart attack and drove from his home town two hours away.

"In this hospital, doctors don't ask for money, this is a great hospital," Kouri said.

That alone illustrates the sorry state of Greece's hospitals.

In fact, experts say the country's health care system is on the brink of collapse. Government health spending fell 25% between 2009 and 2012, after the country's 2010 bailout package capped such spending.

Spending on drugs dropped by 32% since 2010. And the country owes international drug makers 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), according to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.

With the country running out of cash, international organizations are warning that Greece could face medicine shortage within weeks.

Evangelisimos is the biggest hospital in Greece. With 1,000 beds, it is constantly running 10% to 20% over capacity.

The hospital resembles a massive maze, with tunnels and walkways connecting seven huge buildings. The narrow corridors are lined with patients in beds, most of them elderly people hooked to feeding tubes. Some are sleeping, others just stare into the ceiling.

They are waiting for hours for rooms to become available.

"There is just too many patients and not enough rooms," trainee nurse Anastasia Karkasina said.

Karkasina is three months away from becoming fully qualified. She is worried about getting a job.

"There are no available positions, because there is no money to pay for them," she said while taking a short break with fellow trainee Anna Karafoti in the sizzling heat outside the hospital. If the two manage to get jobs, they can expect monthly salaries of about 700 euros ($780).

Another young client of the hospital, 20-year-old Rigelda, sat waiting at one of the empty hospital beds on the fifth floor of the hospital. She came to the hospital with her mother, who -- she said -- "took too many pills."

"It wasn't exactly an accident," she said. She didn't want to go into details about what pushed her mother over the edge. "Family issues," she said. (CNNMoney is withholding the family's name.)

Her father is currently unemployed, so the atmosphere at home is tense. "My mother is a very emotional person. In Greece, right now, even very small things can make you feel hopeless," she said.

The number of suicides in Greece has increased. According to the British Medical Journal, the overall suicide rate rose by 35% between 2010, when the economic crisis first hit the country, and 2012.

The family traveled to Evangelisimos from Glyfada, which is around an hour away, because their local hospital wasn't accepting new patients.

Hospitals in Greece often have a policy of only accepting patients on "emergency days," two or three times a week. If it's not the right day, people who need medical attention have to travel to a different hospital.

The influx of patients puts extra pressure on the already struggling health care staff.

Surgeon George Kolovelonis works 10-hour shifts five days a week at Evangelisimos. Every couple of days, he is on call for 24-hour periods. His job is getting busier and busier.

"The number of patients is increasing, because people are no longer able to afford private care," Kolovelonis said.

Yet Kolovelonis' pay was cut from 2,200 to 1,500 euros a month in the last four years. On average, he performs three surgeries a day, spending six hours in the operating room.

On Sunday, he was doing breast cancer and bowel cancer operations and took a moment out for a Greek-style iced coffee and a cigarette -- Greece has the highest smoking rate in Europe.

"But don't get me wrong," he said between the sips, "I really, really like my job."

Clearly, what's needed are more budget cuts!

[celedhring]

Now that's something Syriza should reform...

The problem with Spain, and I suspect this will be Greece's case too, is that the bulk of benefit payments are directly correlated to how much you have contributed to the system. So, for example, the higher your salary, the more you have paid into payroll taxes, and the higher your unemployment insurance will be. Same with pensions; the more you earn during your active years, the more you have paid into SS, and the higher your pension will be.

[MadImmortalMan]

The problem with Spain, and I suspect this will be Greece's case too, is that the bulk of benefit payments are directly correlated to how much you have contributed to the system. So, for example, the higher your salary, the more you have paid into payroll taxes, and the higher your unemployment insurance will be. Same with pensions; the more you earn during your active years, the more you have paid into SS, and the higher your pension will be.

There is an upper limit to that though right?

Ours works the same way and there's a cap. High-earning people often stop paying SS taxes partway through the year because they hit the annual max contribution.

[celedhring]

The problem with Spain, and I suspect this will be Greece's case too, is that the bulk of benefit payments are directly correlated to how much you have contributed to the system. So, for example, the higher your salary, the more you have paid into payroll taxes, and the higher your unemployment insurance will be. Same with pensions; the more you earn during your active years, the more you have paid into SS, and the higher your pension will be.

There is an upper limit to that though right?

Ours works the same way and there's a cap. High-earning people often stop paying SS taxes partway through the year because they hit the annual max contribution.

There's a cap to pensions and insurance indeed, football managers don't go around getting hundreds of thousands in unemployment insurance if they get sacked :p

Obviously it's not working well enough in our case.

[Monoriu]

Ours works even better - there is no such thing as unemployment insurance

[Drakken]

Mono, I checked about the statutes of the IMF lending to other countries. Seems that the IMF is also prohibited to lend to any country whose debt is considered unsustainable.

Since the IMF considers Greece debt to be unsustainable... well even if it pays its arrieries it still won't loan any money to Greece. A few accountant virtual transfers won't help in this case.

[Razgovory]

For what purpose?

So as to understand the validity of your metric.  If half the time we see increasing revenues as a % of Austerity, then you metric still needs work.  We can't have "austerity" to mean " the way government functions almost all the time, can we?  That makes the word useless.

[garbon]

Ours works even better - there is no such thing as unemployment insurance

Yes, we already know that you don't care about others. Bit tiresome to continue to post that over and over in different ways.

[Monoriu]

Mono, I checked about the statutes of the IMF lending to other countries. Seems that the IMF is also prohibited to lend to any country whose debt is considered unsustainable.

Since the IMF considers Greece debt to be unsustainable... well even if it pays its arrieries it still won't loan any money to Greece. A few accountant virtual transfers won't help in this case.

If there is a political need to lend to Greece, the IMF will find a way.  Call it sustainable tomorrow.  Just a matter of writing another memo.  Or they can set up a special purpose fund.  Lend to that fund, which will lend to Greece.  The possibilities are endless.  If they want to do it, they'll find a way, and mere regulations will not stand in the way. 

[Zanza]

Ours works even better - there is no such thing as unemployment insurance

Hong Kong has social and income discrepancies that would be unacceptable in a democracy. Your system does not work better, the people are just not able to change it.

[Monoriu]

Ours works even better - there is no such thing as unemployment insurance

Hong Kong has social and income discrepancies that would be unacceptable in a democracy. Your system does not work better, the people are just not able to change it.

That is correct

[crazy canuck]

That's not impossible to solve.  Euro group gives money to Greece so that Greece can repay its arrears to IMF immediately.  IMF then lends a fresh round of money to Greece, part of which is to entirely repay the loan that I mentioned a sentence ago.  Just a few accounting entries.  There, no rule has been broken.

I feel Lagarde's unwillingness to intervene stems from much deeper reasons that the mere legalism of unpaid arrieries. Behind this, the IMF's position is that it doesn't want to get dragged into the whole mess, and that the IMF isn't a printing press at the beak and call of the ECB and the Eurozone. Both the latter go from the principle that Greece's debt is solvable on the long-term, despite its present and future debt ratio increasing. The IMF does not, and refuses to go further unless the partners consider relieving part of Greece's debt as a long-term solution.

Also, votes in Parliaments aren't even done yet. It takes only one Parliament refusing to ratify to fuck the whole thing up. Lagarde's declarations in interview might be a spark that will make the powerkeg explode in any of the hardliner countries' legislatures. If the IMF refuses to lend, who will put the compensating money forth? And clearily, the IMF will lend only conditional to considerations of relieving Greece's debt in part, which all hardliners so far, Germany on the forefront, staunchily and vocally refuse even to consider.

Yep,  Lagarde is willing to say this is no solution and is bound to fail.  Someone at the IMF must have been reading our comments on Languish