National Press Review, 8 April

"Health care reform with no anaesthesia" – headlines the Evenimentul Zilei.

Shutting them down without adequate preparation brought doctors and patients in strange situations.

Nearly 70 hospitals have been disbanded overnight, from the office, with the appropriate stammer.

The ones who know the Romanian health care system give their opinion in the Evenimentul Zilei – on what is good and what is wrong about the current attempt to reform hospitals.

"Dead on the altar of the health care reform" – is the title in the Adevărul.

A man from Vâlcea died yesterday in front of the recently closed hospital.

On Wednesday the ambulance was too far from a cardiac person in Constanţa.

Ordinary Romanians – the Adevărul adds – still haven't found out which hospitals were closed on the 1st of April.

They knock on closed doors just to find out in amazement that help is tens of kilometres away.

The Jurnalul Naţional: "The Ministry of Health is misleading cancer patients".

The newspaper claims the Ministry gave an order to stop injectable cancer medication from being purchased from other places except hospital pharmacies, but the hospitals do not have these medications in stock.

The Gândul opens today's issue with a topic from the "finance-banks" area: "Credits in USD and EUR about to go extinct. Mugur Isarescu announces measures to limit loans in foreign exchange".

The Gândul explains: BNR wants to discourage Romanians to loan foreign currency, as it is worried with the alarming increase of arrears.

To be more specific, since February 2008, arrears of loans have increased 25 times, and the ones in foreign currency over 700 times.

Under the title "Revolution of the registration fee", the România Liberă notes that yesterday the European Union Justice Court ruled in favour of a man from Sibiu who asked for the repayment of the first registration fee.

The decision obliges Romanian courts of law – also adds the România Liberă – to oblige the state, in turn, to pay back the amounts charged for second-hand cars.

We conclude with the Adevărul which continues with its campaign "Lobby or bribe?", with the article entitled "Cases of illicit lobby making".

Without a clear legislation, several officials promote laws that only they benefit of, and at the Government you can obtain funds, the Adevărul also adds, if you know how to make "lobby" and you have what to offer in exchange.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University