Austerity kills
http://thebodyeconomic.com/
It's actually a pretty easy connection to make: you hurt both your available workforce by cutting costs in social welfare and you increase total costs due to the higher costs incurred by stuff like increased numbers in the ER, epidemics previously not possible (just look at the rising numbers of TBC in Russia) and so on (unless you believe in Eugenics, that is).Politicians have talked endlessly about the seismic economic and social impacts of the Great Recession, but many continue to ignore its disastrous effects on human health—and have even exacerbated them, by adopting harsh austerity measures and cutting key social programs at a time when constituents need them most. The result, as pioneering public health experts David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu reveal in this provocative book, is that many countries have turned their recessions into veritable epidemics, ruining or extinguishing thousands of lives in a misguided attempt to balance budgets and shore up financial markets. Yet sound alternative policies could instead help improve economies and protect public health at the same time.
In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. In a series of historical case studies stretching from 1930s America, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., Stuckler and Basu reveal that political mismanagement of financial crises has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies, from suicides to HIV infections to West Nile Virus and tuberculosis epidemics. Yet people can and do stay healthy, and even get healthier, during downturns. During the Great Depression, U.S. deaths actually plummeted, and today Iceland, Norway, and Japan are happier and healthier than ever, proof that financial shocks do not inevitably wreak havoc on public health.
Full of shocking and counter intuitive revelations and bold policy recommendations, The Body Economic offers an alternative to austerity—one that will prevent widespread suffering, both now and in the future.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundhei...et-1.1713150-3
Besonders peinlich wird es immer dann, wenn sie nachweisen können, dass der IWF, der ja nur so um sich wirft mit vermeintlich unumstößlichen Zahlen, Quoten, Prozentangaben, immer wieder irgendwelche Zaubervariablen in sein vermeintlich glasklares Kalkül hineinmischt: Wer hat festgelegt, dass Griechenland nur noch sechs Prozent seines Bruttosozialprodukts für den Gesundheitssektor ausgeben darf? Die Zahl ist reine Willkür, kein Arzt, kein Gesundheitsexperte wurde vom IWF bei der Festlegung zu Rate gezogen.
"Hätte man an die Austeritätsprogramme dieselben strengen Standards angelegt, mit der klinische Studien betrieben werden, wären sie längst ausgesetzt worden", schreiben die beiden Autoren am Ende. "Die Nebenwirkungen der Behandlung sind katastrophal und oftmals tödlich. Es konnte kein positiver Nutzen festgestellt werden."
Anfang Juni hat der IWF in einem Bericht eingestanden, dass die "bittere Medizin" in Griechenland extrem bittere Folgen hatte: Zwischen den eigenen Vorhersagen und der eingetretenen Realität gebe es einen "sehr großen" Unterschied, schrieb der IWF. Man habe für das Jahr 2012 fest mit einem ex gerechnet. Tatsächlich geht es weiter bergab, Griechenland befindet sich das fünfte Jahr in Folge in der Rezession.
Translation: The report becomes especially embarrassing when they can prove that the IMF, which throws quite a lot of numbers, quotas and percentages around, frequently mixes magic variables into its seemingly transparent calculations: Who exactly decided that Greece may only use six percent of its gross national product for the health care sector? This number is purely arbitrary, no doctor, no health expert was involved in setting this rate by the IMF.
"If you had applied the same strict standards to the austerity program which you normally use for clinical studies, you would have had to stop them quite a long time ago," both authors write at the end. "The side effects of the treatment are catastrophic and quite often lethal. No positive effect could be determined."
At the beginning of June the IMF had to admit that the "bitter medicine" had quite extremely bitter effects in Greece: There's a "huge disparity" between forecasts and actual reality, wrote the IMF. One expected an economic expansion in 2012. Instead, it's all downhill, Greece is in a recession for five years straight.
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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
You shouldn't just gloss over other decades, changes in monetary policy, central banking, financial deregulation, creating the Euro, etc. And don't forget the Great Recession was a result of a global financial crisis. 
