Healthcare in Greece

[3] It is not known whether or not cities in ancient Greece provided free healthcare to their citizens, but recent study of the ruins of the Kos Asclepieion show that medical services were offered to everyone who could pay for them, including slaves and foreigners.

Professor Timothy S. Miller of the Johns Hopkins University argues that the Byzantine Empire was the first to employ a system of hospital-based healthcare, where the hospital became the chief institution of the medical profession in contrast to its function as a last resort in Western medieval Europe, carrying forward the medical knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome.

On the basis of Law 6298 of 1934, the Social Insurance Institute (Greek: Ίδρυμα Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, IKA) was established, which started operating in 1937.

During the post-war period, the decentralization of the system was established with Law 2592 of 1953, all health units came under the Ministry of Social Welfare and the proportional distribution of hospital beds was attempted.

[12] In 2016, the Greek government voted to extend health coverage to uninsured people who are registered as unemployed and refugees from June 1 on, with those earning less than 2,400 euro a year entitled to free healthcare, with the threshold rising for families according to how many children they have.

[17] Emergency, ambulance and air-ambulance services in Greece are provided by the National Center for Direct Aid, known mostly by the acronym EKAB (Greek: Εθνικό Κέντρο Άμεσης Βοήθειας).

[citation needed] On an OECD health report in 2011, Greece got the following results:[18] Healthcare expenditure per capita went down by 28% between 2009 and 2011 - a more drastic cut than any other European country.

However treatment results have not deteriorated, but according to the survey conducted by the Euro health consumer index in 2015 Albania was the European country in which unofficial payments to doctors were reported most commonly.

[20] This planned major increase in generic use has been driven by conditions of economic support from the European Union and International Monetary Fund requiring that Greece reduce overall public spending on drugs.