More thoughts on Greece

Thinking further about the situation in Greece, Simon Kuper wrote an especially poignant piece in the weekend FT that compares the ordeal about to be thrust upon middle class Greeks with that of Argentinians in 2002.

And there was my Argentine friend who lost her mother.  The mother, a nurse, had fallen ill, deteriorated, and then died without ever being diagnosed.  Afterwards, my friend deduced that she had had a brain trauma.  Being a nurse, the mother had apparently diagnosed it herself, decided that treatment would be too expensive, and quietly died.  All these people felt disbelief.  This couldn’t be happening to them.  It turned out that there was no safety net, no benevolent state.

This goes well beyond what the pharma industry can alleviate: if there's no money for basic health care there's certainly no money for biologic agents.