Greece Owes $1.2 Billion To Drugmakers As Government Can No Longer Afford Basic Medical Supplies
Talks between Greece and its creditors went full-retard on Wednesday when the following soundbite from Canada’s FinMin Joe Oliver hit the wires:
“No Greek payment to IMF would be default to IMF”
That seemed self-evident to us, but in a world governed by debt, we suppose everyone occasionally needs to remind themselves that failure to make good on one’s obligations constitutes default.
In any event, Greece apparently owes quite a bit of money to the world’s drug suppliers because, as we reported earlier this week, Athens is now running short on bed sheets and painkillers in its hospitals as the consequences of being completely beholden to the ”institutions” which control the printing of a fiat currency become increasingly clear.
Here’s what we said on Sunday:
The idea that a developed country cannot provide basic emergency medical care because it is in poor standing with the institutions that print a fiat currency is patently absurd and simply isn’t tenable meaning that one way or another, this ‘situation’ will resolve itself in the coming weeks, an event which will put Europe’s broken bond markets to a rather difficult test.
And now, we get this from Reuters:
Cash-strapped Greece has racked up mounting debts with international drugmakers and now owes the industry more than 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), a leading industry official said on Wednesday.The rising unpaid bill reflects the growing struggle by the nearly bankrupt country to muster cash, andcreates a dilemma for companies under moral pressure not to cut off supplies of life-saving medicines.
Richard Bergstrom, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, told Reuters his members had not been paid by Greece since December 2014. They are owed money by both hospitals and state-run health insurer EOPYY.
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