The saga of the Romanian health-care reform

In the 2011 National Strategy for Hospital Rationalization,2 informal pay ments were recognised as having an important role in the underperformance of the Romanian health system, although the document fails to provide a strategy to tackle informal payments. An older document, drafted by the Presidential Commission for Public Health Policies Analysis and Elaboration (suggestively titled "A health-care system centred on citizens' needs"),3 also identifies informal pay ments as an important barrier in accessing basic healthcare services.