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...
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!
Ran into unavailability a couple of weeks ago on a prescription ... pharmacy did not have it and could not get it.
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.
watch the breakdown in greece. learn from it. it’s on the way here.
I suspect drugs aren’t being shipped to Greece because there’s concern the money will be worthless soon - or that the companies won’t get paid.
Although wrestling was removed from the Olympics, it should be fairly common in Greece.
Didn’t the State of Illinois have that same problem? It went away when they paid the bills
They should stop complaining. They may not have any medication, but it’s free.
Any good reading material on substitutes on popular meds for BP or pain etc
It’s beginning to look like the Greeks are all gonna die!