New Democracy candidate and Medical professor Spyros Pneumatikos considers terminal cancer patients as a big financial burden for the national health care system and proposed a “triage”, that is sorting out cancer patients in the logic of “cost-benefit ratio.”
who are fighting tooth and nail for their lives as a great financial burden for the state and the NHS. The provocative statement.
Pneumatikos – irony: means “spiritual” in Greek – made the unrepresented cynical statement aiming to reduce the number of patients in hospitals during an interview with Skai FM on Thursday.
The candidate in Evia went so far to describe his proposal as “humane.”
“A terminal cancer patient is not mandatory… he won’t make it, he doesn’t have a good prognosis, we have to draw a line at some point. Why? Because it is very difficult to be able to cope with the expenses needed to deal with fellow human beings,” he said.
To strengthen his point he presented the example of America, where, as he said, a cost-benefit ratio is made, where social security is not mandatory as in Greece.
“We have to see the evaluation of the actions. How many of these actions we do every day are needed? That is, a cost of enormous proportions can be made if we limit some things from those that do not need to be done. It doesn’t mean we don’t love the sick person if we go and tell them “there’s no point in doing this for you”. A terminal cancer patient is not mandatory… He won’t make it, he doesn’t have a good prognosis, we have to draw a line at some point. Why? Because it is very difficult to be able to cope with the expenses needed to deal with fellow human beings. There is a point where you have no reason to do anything more. Someone will tell me that the good God has decided otherwise. But indeed, this thing is true, but at the end of the day what will happen?” the apparently god-fearing and believing politician and doctor dared saying.
- Thank God, the “good-hearted” doctor who got 14,000 votes in May 21 elections, he is not an oncologist but a orthopedics surgeon.
Is this the new, “better health care system” ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis promises in all pre-elections speeches to the punlic?
It should be recalled that ND health minister Adonis Georgiadis (2013-2014) had proposed that only terminal cancer patients should seek emergencies in the hospitals and no other cancer patients in other disease stages.
Due an storm of outrage back then, PM Antonis Samaras did not dare to give the green light for the implementation of such a proposal.
Mismanagement, bribes and absence of effective control mechanism in spending are chronic problems in Greece’s public hospitals.
PS If you don’t start with curing these problems to get your budgets under control, you can send terminal cancer patients directly to the graveyard.
Your problem won’t be solve, though.
UPDATE:
Following an outrage and intervention by a high-ranking ND official, Pneumatikos made a “clarifying statement” later on Thursday saying his statements on terminal cancer patients were “distorted and published isolated from the broader context,” blah blah blah.
He also apologized saying “Sorry if some of my words left room for misinterpretation.”
According to Skai, prior to his clarification, he contacted close aide of Kyriakos Mitsotaks, Pavlos Marinakis who expressed his dissatisfaction with the ND candidate for the Greek Parliament.
Says the man who dosen’t have terminal cancer
Greece is not kind to its sick and terminal citizens.Someones last weeks or days will not be spent in a hospice where they will receive humane kindness,medication and loving care,no Macmillan nurses will visit their home to offer relief for them or their families.Those nurses will stay awake all night telling the family to sleep a little and will administer the drugs needed for pain and this is often the way they reach the next place and they do so with DIGNITY as in a hospice also,This is a cruel man and should be ashamed of himself.
Hopsice is an unknonw word in this behind-the-moon EU country in 21sr century.
Different categories but Martin Niemöller’s words come to mind
First they came for the cancer patients, and I did not speak out because I was not a cancer patient
Then they came for the heart patients and I did not speak out because I was not a heart patient
Then they came for the disabled and and I did not speak out because I was not disabled
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me
“Mismanagement, bribes and absence of effective control mechanism in spending are chronic problems in Greece’s public hospitals.”
You’ve just also described the UK’s National Harm Service!
Is Spyros Pneumatikos a student of Yuval Noah Harari perhaps?
The Jenny Karezi Foundation…..so named after the very famous Greek actress who died in 1992 of cancer and found the palliative support care offered in Greece to be extremely poor or non existent thus she wanted to offer that for others which she could not find in her final days of painful illness.Details of her foundation can be found on line.
the foundation closed after some years.