The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) MEP Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos addressed the plenary session of the European Parliament in the debate on the "Programme for the Union’s action in the field of Health for the period 2021-2027 - EU4Health".
This program seeks to legitimize the inadequacy of public health systems that was proved painfully in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and is even more dramatically confirmed in the second. It lays down, among other, the air transportation of doctors from one country with a disintegrated public health system "of one disease" to another, perpetuating the patch of gaps, opening others, while in each case the private health groups are growing richer, destroying the people's income.
This program seeks to legitimize the inadequacy of public health systems that was proved painfully in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and is even more dramatically confirmed in the second. It lays down, among other, the air transportation of doctors from one country with a disintegrated public health system "of one disease" to another, perpetuating the patch of gaps, opening others, while in each case the private health groups are growing richer, destroying the people's income.
In essence, the concept of commercialization of health, public-private partnerships, in the logic of "cost-benefit" is consolidated, with the state "guaranteeing" only a "minimum basic package", which will not suffice even for the basic and from then on, the logic "whoever has to pay ..." with the tool of private insurance will completely dominate. This program has nothing to do with satisfaction the urgent needs of the people and with funding to address the huge shortages and needs of public health systems.
The MEP of the KKE, Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos stated the following:
"ICUs across the EU are in an alarming state. Doctors are called again to decide who will live and who will die due to the tragic shortages. Bourgeois governments and the EU are defending the commercialization of health-care and its competitive functioning for the benefit of business groups, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
The EU’s and the bourgeois states’ celebrations for the vaccine cannot hide the sharp competition of pharmaceutical companies that are incompatible with the social right of health-care that hide the terms of contracts unknown and dangerous to the people. You give 1.7 trillion to business groups and banks, but "for Health" your budget is only 9 billion that will not be allocated to public structures, but for further commercialization and PPPs, with the people paying handsomely.
We call for immediate requisition, without compensation,of private clinics and integration in the national planning, to provide surgeries, tests, examinations for all diseases. To make mass recruitments of healthcare professionals, to open ICUs, to take measures to prevent the disease in workplaces, nursing homes and public transportation under the state’s responsibility".
