Don't diss the Romanian health service

You're right... and that doesn't make me feel any better about humanity.

I don't know about actual Romanian health services, but they sure do have a lot of hot doctors...good place to get sick.

Romanian?!?!??! When I first heard about it, I thought it was an American picture!

This is the state of health care in the majority of the world - in the richest countries as well as the poorest - and it's sad. I cannot wait to see this film!



Just because you can talk, does not mean you are intelligent - Star Wars

You're wrong and missing the point. Some of the doctors were extremely emotionally abusive and arrogant. One doesn't get the impression that they internalized any of the instructions they may or may not have received about treating patients with dignity. I thought most were extremely unprofessional, by which I mean self-absorbed. They focused on who they were rather than what they did. So extreme were the behaviors depicted in this film that I couldn't recognize them at all in their American counterparts.

There's plenty of room for good critiques of American health care. The American film The Hospital, for example, works beautifully as a farce, but a documentary-like film such as this could never be adapted to an American setting without losing either veracity on the one hand or satirical punch on the other.

I didn't get the impression that the Romanian health service was portrayed as bad.

The patient happened 1) to be sick on the wrong night (accident) and 2) to be smelling of alcohol. That ought to slow things down in any country. Doctors can be very difficult with patients who smell of alcohol. And the accident thing is, of course, no one's fault. The only parts where the Health system does look bad are when the doctors disagree just because of their self-pride. Just because someone else says a diagnostic, they have to doubt it. Now, this is also typical. Sometimes you could have had your arm cut by a chainsaw, show up at the emergency saying you had your arm cut by a chainsaw, and still the doctor would diagnose you with something else just to show that he can make his own diagnostic. I don't think that this trait belongs to every doctor, let alone Romanian doctor (or nurses), so it has been mildly exagerated in this movie. I think it is the only part which has been exagerated. Nevertheless, no matter how obnoxious are some doctors, they all seem to want to save mr Lazarescu. Except for the resident neurosurgeon.

All in all, the movie didn't appear to me as a critic of the Romanian Health System, but as a chronicle of life under such circumstances (loneliness, badluck, alcoholism, etc).

Well, Norway which I live in has the best health care system in the world. Micheal Moore was here to film a couple of scenes for his movie Sicko and said in a interview that he could not show it because people would simply not belive it. We have also won "the best country to live in" title from UN.
I didn't see much wrong about the health care system in this movie though and from what I have seen in other movies it's probably just as good as the crappy sh_t it seems like they have in USA.

Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyle

I agree. here in Lithuania, he would have died, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, which wouldnt. Why? because they would first have to dig their way though the snow (altrough much less nowadays) before coming, because goverment "doesnt have money to clean roads"

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"Common sense is not so common."
- Voltaire

Let me present the reality in Romania. It was just on the news today: a guy was sent from a hospital to another - in different counties for three days, before he died. He presented for a headache, it evolved worse and worse, died of heart failure. His name was Viorel Stan, 41 years old.