Greece’s health care insurance system EOPYY, which has a 1.2 billion euro ($1.54 billion) debt, is running amok with mismanagement, Public Administration Inspector Leandros Rakintzis, tasked with rooting out corruption and mismanagement, said, adding it’s barely a legal operation.
Rakintzis is probing the finances of the ailing organization as international lenders want to find out what’s going wrong there. In his initial findings, Rakintzis said that the organization’s finances aren’t transparent and that there is no clear picture of its expenditures and protocol, adding that its organizational structure is in complete disarray.
The organization doesn’t know what it’s spending and where, he said, and is running a monthly deficit of 100 million euros ($130 million) despite being subsidized by money deducted from Greek worker paychecks.
He said high-level civil servants like academics, politicians and doctors have taken advantage of the system and charged it with unnecessary expenses, citing the example of nine Parliamentary deputies – whom he did not name – who sought expensive treatments abroad on the state’s tab instead of being treated in Greece and were allowed to do so, at a time when many Greeks who’ve lost their jobs have no coverage at all.
The inspector went on to say that EOPYY’s entire set-up is slip-shod, suggesting that it needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. It was a damning indictment that matched complaints from critics but there is no indication yet the government plans to do anything about it. No executive or manager at the agency is being reprimanded or replaced.
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