Health Knowledge and Health Consumption in the Romanian Society

Similar to other countries from Eastern Europe, the Semashko health care system before 1989 in Romania was a highly regulated, standardized and centralized system, characterized through an inequitable allocation of resources, the lack of response to local needs and poor managerial capacities. After 1990 the country has engaged into a long road of health care reforms in order to significantly improve the health system performance and patient satisfaction. The focus of these reforms was mainly on the financing issues, finally transforming the state financed model to an insurance based system, a system that has almost totally ignored the socio-economic and cultural metamorphose of its “patients”. Liberty, globalization and multiculturalism are the current buzz words, allowing the language of consumerism to progressively incorporate more and more the health care system, and inspiring us to view health just as another simple commodity. The paper explores the way health it is perceived and dealt with in the Romanian society, analyzing the contextual consumption background along with influence of variables like health information and health knowledge.