Check out this article from The New York Times about Romanian health care and corruption.
Story starts off with a great lede about a family that had a heartbreaking experience with the health care system.
And here’s a fact that caught my attention: “And Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog, ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union last year, behind neighboring Bulgaria.”
It’s hard for me to imagine living in situations like these, where bribery is not only normal, but expected. I wonder how seeing this aspect of the culture in person will affect me.
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It will not affect you at all, unless you’re getting sick or you’re victim of an accident. And the bribe it is not so costly, only the nurses expect you to give them something in exchange for their services, the doctors are not beggars (but they also appreciate if you give them a small attention, like cigarettes, especialy now when alcohol and tobacco became more and more over-taxed).
0gar– Yesterday in our interview we asked the UTD student who moved here recently from Romania whether he thought Western media misrepresented Romania to an extent (maybe over dramatized the conditions?) I am curious, what do you think? Do you live there now or moved from there recently? You seem to know a lot about current conditions. I’d love to get your take!
Ofcourse the journals asks only for the sensational parts. I’m an average Romanian and I say that we have a good Health-Care System, but now the people who are working in this System are not plenty enough for the growing numbers of pacients and i think not even your country do not have sufficient doctors. But in my country the low payments push them to emigrate in another countries from Europe (like Spain for example) for a better salary. Something new for us is the private helth-care (like asylum for old-people or esthetic-clinics, we expect to apear even private hospitals) who are not so cheap like the public system, but doesn’t alowed bribe among the workers who treat the pacients.