Meanings and consequences of informal payments in the Romanian health care sector

"If you don't move the table, you don't get anything," an elderly Roma tells me bitterly during an interview about access to health care services. The local idiom doesn't make much sense to me, but from the context of our talk I could tell that it was a veiled reference to the need to make informal payments in order to receive adequate care. Many other participants echo this view, bemoaning the venality and callousness of some doctors or, more rarely, praising a "good-hearted" practitioner who has refused the money offered.