Greek government not paying for medicine
No one should be compelled to supply their product at a loss. This dispute highlights the bankruptcy of the Greek state and the potential losses to companies who do business with government health care entities. The particular product in question is not so much a state of the art medication, as it is a state of the art delivery system for a rather common diabetes insulin injection. There are cheaper alternatives that are a little more trouble to use, but certainly adequate for treating a person's diabetes. In fact, the company is offering an alternative free of charge.The world's leading supplier of the anti-diabetes drug insulin is withdrawing a state-of-the-art medication from Greece.
Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, objects to a government decree ordering a 25% price cut in all medicines.
A campaign group has condemned the move as "brutal capitalist blackmail".
More than 50,000 Greeks with diabetes use Novo Nordisk's product, which is injected via an easy-to-use fountain pen-like device.
A spokesman for the Danish pharmaceutical company said it was withdrawing the product from the Greek market because the price cut would force its business in Greece to run at a loss.
The company was also concerned that the compulsory 25% reduction would have a knock-on effect because other countries use Greece as a key reference point for setting drug prices.
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International pharmaceutical companies are owed billions in unpaid bills. Novo Nordisk claims it is owed $36m (£24.9m) dollars by the Greek state.
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It is brutal socialist blackmail and kudos to novo nordisk for not giving in.
ReplyDeleteIt is common knowledge that the Greek crisis is due to the extravagant social programs which required defecit spending at least four times greater than the EU regulations allowed
Greece and the other members of the PIIGS group in the EU were assuming that the day of reckoning could be put off forever. Novo Nordisk is doing us all a favour in saying that they will have to pay the piper: It needs ro be done by as many large corporations as possible, as soon as possible.
Government by crisis management, especially crises generated by the government itself, is a slow but sure way to revolution because every time the is a crisis, a small piece of liberty is chipped away.
-it was obvious to observers that this was going to happen sooner or later
There was not the political will, because the crisis promotes the European superstate: and just like Bismarck's Germany which was federalized 150 years ago, the dominant culture will become run from Berlin