While developing countries move towards the welfare state, European countries need to redesign their welfare model. European states have become so big they are now unwieldy. Basic safety nets have been stretched to unexpected sizes and because the state supports everything that “people deserve”, it’s getting harder and harder to […]

Whenever I hear about the so-called “welfare-state model”, I always think of Polygraf Polygraphovitch Sharikov. He is a protagonist in Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastic story The Heart of a Dog. In the early days of the USSR, a professor-surgeon created a hybrid between a dog and a man, which turned into […]

“My mom called me in the middle of the day and said that I should come home immediately because some strangers had brought my father back after he collapsed in the street,” a very close friend told me. “So I took a taxi. When I arrived home, my older sister […]

Healthcare reform has triggered many controversies in Romania ranging from street protests in January 2012 over a new healthcare bill to massive online activism just a year later against government plans to prevent citizens from using their mandatory health insurance in private hospitals. To be really honest and without being […]

In spite of the recent downturn in the economy, Hungary is still considered a welfare state. Political statements echo this view, claiming that healthcare is for free. The moves by the former government, which tried to implement a “visit fee” of one Euro to help finance healthcare, are often criticized, […]