I came down with a major cold—sore throat, post nasal drip and a cough. I also had quite a bit of work to do. Back in early February I had promised to give four lectures to students of Helga and Edina in the Faculty of Health Sciences. I was about to work on them when Peter reminded me that I had agreed to write up my US Health Care Reform presentations into an article which he would then comment on and translate into Hungarian. It would be submitted to a Hungarian journal and was due Apr 26. So in the spirit of publish and perish, I mustered my strength and typed away despite the cold. I lucked out when Peter told me that classes were called off on Wednesday. Apparently the sports hygiene faculty is part of the Medical complex and Wednesday was declared a sports day for everyone including the medical students.
On Thursday Tari and I took the train to Veszprem, a town near Lake Balaton. It has an American Corners which was hosting an America Week. This was started three years ago by philosophy professor Scott Campbell, a Fulbrighter from Nazareth College, Rochester NY. It brings together Hungarian and American lecturers, professors, officials and professionals to talk on various topics. I was asked to talk about US Health Care Reform. Since Scott Campbell was talking on American Pragmatism, I entitled my talk Obama’s Pragmatic Strategy. We were not sure where to get off the train as it made several short stops about the time we expected to arrive at Veszprem. The station signs are usually high above the main station doors and hard to see if one is in a back car or facing the wrong direction.
We were met at the train station by a Dean and taken to the campus of Pannon University. Since it was drizzling we sat and talked in his office instead of sight seeing in the town. Tom Burns showed up followed by a younger Pannon faculty member who then walked us through the town to lunch. Huba and Annamaria were meeting us for lunch, but they drove from Budapest and ran into some heavy traffic due to the rain. Eventually we all assembled and had a nice lunch.
The presentations went very well. Someone put the conference on utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzXAxbVe348. It covers the whole week and I appear in it along with my title slide. Don’t know what was said since it was all in Hungarian. The Americans in the audience really liked what I had to say. They thought it explained quite a lot of what had happened and what was in the legislation.
I spent Friday working on the paper for Peter. We went out to dinner and happened to sit next to a woman from Germany. She had met with some people at Corvinus University, but was stranded because of the volcano. She said she would probably take a ten hour train ride on Saturday. We later learned that the contingent from Nazareth College at America Week in Veszprem was also stranded for several days.
Early Saturday morning I put the final touches on the first draft of my paper and emailed it to Peter. We then got on a train to visit Helga in Eger. Unfortunately we didn't realize that we had to switch trains. When I had looked up the train schedule, unlike airplane schedules, I saw no indication that I would need to transfer trains. The train stopped very briefly and as it pulled away I asked about Eger. Several people told us we should have gotten off and they were very helpful in explaining the situation to both us and the conductor. We had to ride an extra half hour to the next station, buy a ticket to return to where we should have transferred and get on the train to Eger. We arrived two hours late. In addition neither Tari nor I had Helga’s cell phone number. She had emailed it to me but I forgot my cell phone. Cell phones are not my thing.
All that said, we had a very nice relaxing weekend in Eger. We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant Helga recommended. She then took us on a tour of the famous Castle which held out against a Turkish siege in 1552. I had just about finished reading the historical novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Egri csillagok) which is about the siege. I was told this was mandatory reading for all students in Hungary. The equivalent in the US would be if everyone in junior high had to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
We saw just about everything at the Castle except the underground tunnels. We walked back to our hotel and promptly fell asleep. When we awoke it was well after 8pm. We were not hungry for a complete dinner and found the only short order place in the area was the local McDonalds.
On Sunday Helga took us to the Baroque library in Eger's Lyceum which had a very old library with very old books. The ceiling had a magnificent trompe l'oeil painting of Council of Trent and its four major decisions in each corner. In one corner scholarship is encouraged but a lightning bolt is setting censored books on fire. (cant quite see it in this picture) http://www.pbase.com/richardmartin/image/123133258 . We stopped for some ice cream at her favorite place. We were then met by her husband and children. We walked through the large city park with many tables selling a variety of things. The train ride home was direct to Budapest Keleti pu and uneventful.
Monday I answered a few outstanding questions that Peter had and then began putting together the lecture for Hegla’s class. I had two lectures on Tuesday. The first was in the morning for Helga’s class on health law and ethics. The second was for Laszlo at Corvinus and was on Clinton and Obama. I spoke in a room in the new building’s library. The room, which probably holds at least 50 people, was overflowing. It had been advertised on the Corvinus website. A few had called Laszlo and asked if I was able to come because of the Iceland volcano. In my talk I mentioned that the pharmaceutical industy got a twelve year patent protection for biologics and bio-similar drugs. In the question and answer time I learned that these types of drugs are allowed in the EU but not in the US. The reform billcreates a pathway for biologics and bio-similar drugs to enter the US market.
On Wednesday gave a lecture to the English language medical students on US state experiments in health care—Hawaii’s employer mandate from the 1970’s, Oregon’s rationing system for people on Medicaid based on budget and importance of procedure, Tennessee’s good intentions at expanding coverage through TENNCARE that was spoiled by overzealous attempts to contain costs and finally Massachusetts’s 2006 individual mandate..
On Thursday I moderated the second half of a Fulbright session for Hungarians who had returned from Fulbrights in the US. The first presenter in my portion of the meeting was stranded in Paris because of the Iceland volcano. I had to call time on two of the presenters who had run well over the 20 minute allotment. Afterwards several people told me I had done the right thing. The presentations ranged from music to history to philosophy. I learned something about the role of Princeton Theological Seminar in promoting Presbyterianism in Hungary. I knew Harvard was more Unitarian and Yale Congregationalist New Light, but didn’t know how Princeton fit in.
By this time Tari came down with a sore throat and a cough. We were concerned that she might have strep. I asked around and was told to go to a clinic near Moscova Ter. On Wednesday Tari went to the NAWA book club lunch meeting. But when the book club chair was stranded in Malta because of the volcano, they called it off. Tari didn’t know and went to the restaurant. Fortunately one of the other women stopped by and they had lunch. At the regular Friday NAWA meeting someone recommended a clinic up in Buda that had American trained doctors. Tari called and got an appointment for that same afternoon. The doctor was very nice, gave her a test and told her she didn’t have strep. It cost a ton of money but then we learned we were paying “expat” prices. Tari got a receipt and we can get reimbursed from our US health insurance when we return.
On Friday morning I presented on three topics over three hours to a masters degree class at Corvinus. The students seemed very interested and I thought it went very well Afterwards Norbert and I had a nice lunch at a restaurant that specialized in a large variety of wines.
That night we saw The Magic Flute sung in Hungarian. It was not at the state opera house. The singers were very good and the Queen of the Night easily hit every note in her famous aria. The costumes were modern day. The Queen of the Night wore a black dress with a gold cape like coat (I would have preferred silver for the moon) and in the seduction scene her three attendants are in their Victoria’s Secret lingerie. The three boys are in soccer uniforms and kick a ball back and forth with Tomino. The stage sets had their pluses and minuses. The first act settings were primarily Tomino’s and Pamina’s bedrooms, his with a large toy castle, hers with a large doll house. But the room was cleverly turned on its side or upside down for other first act scenes. Clever but we didn’t quite get it. In the second act the trial by fire was represented by Pamina and Tomino stepping over theatre seats that glowed red, but we did not see anything the reminded us of the trial by water.
Tari rested on Saturday and I plugged away at preparing the extra lectures. She was feeling better that night and so we really treated ourselves. We went to the Argentine steak house and had tenderloin and baked potatoes. After months of not having a real steak it was fantastic. The prices and quality were similar to a Ruth Chris steak house in the US.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
April Cold
I came down with a heavy cold this past week. I had a very sore throat on Sunday which gradually progressed up to the back and roof of my mouth during the week. It was aggravated by a post nasal drip. We ran out of aspirin and had to buy some. While Americans may overpay for prescription drugs the cost of an over the counter drug like aspirin was over $4 for 20 big old fashioned round tablets sold only in an apothecary. We did pick up some antibacterial mouth wash at what would be a drug store in US but here sells everything but the drugs. Tari put in the ear plugs for a few nights and we both survived the week.
On Tuesday I met with Zita Paprika and Gitta at Corvinus to talk about a possible exchange program with MSU College of Social Science and Department of Sociology. They had sent me a copy of their latest catalogue to look up courses that might be a good match for exchange students. I didn’t find much for sociology in their catalogue but went on line and found a degree program in English for Sociology. That had quite a few courses with similar titles and even texts that we might use in our Sociology courses.
But when I met Zita and Gitta, I discovered that the program and those courses were offered by a different faculty. Zita was in the faculty of business and directed its international program. Not that some things couldn’t be worked out but it clearly was not her first choice. So we went over other courses her faculty offered. The best matches were in economics and political science. One or two psych courses were possibilities as were two of the sociology courses in her catalogue. I said I would go back and see about matching the courses to the MSU course descriptions, and would report back to the MSU people on our discussion.
Finding the MSU course description was a minor problem since the MSU website had been totally revamped from scratch and opened April 2. In my opinion whenever programmers redo something from scratch the new version is twice as bad as they say it is going to be good, and inevitably has to be revised.
The new home page has big rotating pictures (including our final four basketball appearance), seven dropdown tabs: About, Admission, Academics, Research, Global, Engagement, and Athletics. Below the rotating pictures were three panels containing a video promotional, three news headlines and one or two upcoming events. While I could navigate to the course descriptions without too much difficulty under the academics tab, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the faculty pages I use for class records, grading etc. The faculty page contained all sorts of links to human resources. It is as if the faculty never has to use the website for class related tasks. After several emails a few people told me how to get where I wanted to go, but it took a minimum of four clicks. So I simply created icons on my desktop that allows me a one click access to where I want to be and I no longer have the MSU website as my home page. [by the next Tuesday, mirabile dictu they have added “logins” for instructor menu and the ANGEL site that has all our course syllabi, assignments etc under the smaller faculty tab on the front page!] But despite my cold and frustration, I managed to find corresponding course titles and descriptions and send off my report.
On Wednesday I managed to give my class presentation on Clinton to Obama health care reform in a very hoarse voice. The students were understanding and the one or two Americans asked about how they or ex-pats would be treated if and when they returned to US. Very good questions and my only response was that it would hopefully be covered in the rules and to contact the US embassy.
I stayed home the rest of the week working on an article on the Obama Health Reforms that Peter will translate into Hungarian and publish at the end of April. Tari meanwhile had to go clothes shopping. Between her continued efforts to eat less and walk more she has dropped a size or two and desperately needed new pants and tops. After checking out a few of the higher end stores at one of the malls on a peanut butter run, she found a reasonably priced clothing store and bought several tops and a pair of pants. She has said several thank yous to whatever impulse led her to buy 3 paris of pants in the US hat were almost too small. They have become a mainstay of her wardrobe.
On Thursday night we treated Kristin and her husband to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She had helped us get through those first few weeks—dealing with the condo manager, getting us cell phones, finding all the heating, water and electric meters in the flat, giving us additional book on Hungary, Budapest, and Hungarian, and explaining how the washing machine worked. The food was great and we had a very nice conversation with them. None of us wanted to leave.
On Friday Fulbright took us to Pecs, one of three or four European Cultural Capitals for 2010. Pecs is a university town with the famous Zsolnay Ceramics and porcelain factory. We met with several of the Fulbrighters who were teaching or working in Pecs. One gave us a tour of the high school where he taught English as a second language and American literature studies. We also had tours of the Zsolnay museum and the Csontvary Museum, the latter containing the works of a rather eccentric 20th century painter. On Friday night we selected tickets to a Varadi Roma Concert. Unfortunately as I have discovered, almost all concerts these days are amplified as if they were blasting into an open field at Woodstock. But this was in a packed small room that couldn’t have seated more that 250 people. The music was good but our ears were ringing. On Saturday afternoon we had free time. We had lunch with Tom, Carol and Lori at a nice restaurant and then Tom took us on a tour of the countryside. We visited an old castle monastery north of Pecs, got lost looking for a second historical ruin and then couldn’t find the monument marking some major battle against the Turks. Afterwards we had a nice snack at Tom and Carol’s apartment before taking the train back to Budapest.
On Tuesday I met with Zita Paprika and Gitta at Corvinus to talk about a possible exchange program with MSU College of Social Science and Department of Sociology. They had sent me a copy of their latest catalogue to look up courses that might be a good match for exchange students. I didn’t find much for sociology in their catalogue but went on line and found a degree program in English for Sociology. That had quite a few courses with similar titles and even texts that we might use in our Sociology courses.
But when I met Zita and Gitta, I discovered that the program and those courses were offered by a different faculty. Zita was in the faculty of business and directed its international program. Not that some things couldn’t be worked out but it clearly was not her first choice. So we went over other courses her faculty offered. The best matches were in economics and political science. One or two psych courses were possibilities as were two of the sociology courses in her catalogue. I said I would go back and see about matching the courses to the MSU course descriptions, and would report back to the MSU people on our discussion.
Finding the MSU course description was a minor problem since the MSU website had been totally revamped from scratch and opened April 2. In my opinion whenever programmers redo something from scratch the new version is twice as bad as they say it is going to be good, and inevitably has to be revised.
The new home page has big rotating pictures (including our final four basketball appearance), seven dropdown tabs: About, Admission, Academics, Research, Global, Engagement, and Athletics. Below the rotating pictures were three panels containing a video promotional, three news headlines and one or two upcoming events. While I could navigate to the course descriptions without too much difficulty under the academics tab, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the faculty pages I use for class records, grading etc. The faculty page contained all sorts of links to human resources. It is as if the faculty never has to use the website for class related tasks. After several emails a few people told me how to get where I wanted to go, but it took a minimum of four clicks. So I simply created icons on my desktop that allows me a one click access to where I want to be and I no longer have the MSU website as my home page. [by the next Tuesday, mirabile dictu they have added “logins” for instructor menu and the ANGEL site that has all our course syllabi, assignments etc under the smaller faculty tab on the front page!] But despite my cold and frustration, I managed to find corresponding course titles and descriptions and send off my report.
On Wednesday I managed to give my class presentation on Clinton to Obama health care reform in a very hoarse voice. The students were understanding and the one or two Americans asked about how they or ex-pats would be treated if and when they returned to US. Very good questions and my only response was that it would hopefully be covered in the rules and to contact the US embassy.
I stayed home the rest of the week working on an article on the Obama Health Reforms that Peter will translate into Hungarian and publish at the end of April. Tari meanwhile had to go clothes shopping. Between her continued efforts to eat less and walk more she has dropped a size or two and desperately needed new pants and tops. After checking out a few of the higher end stores at one of the malls on a peanut butter run, she found a reasonably priced clothing store and bought several tops and a pair of pants. She has said several thank yous to whatever impulse led her to buy 3 paris of pants in the US hat were almost too small. They have become a mainstay of her wardrobe.
On Thursday night we treated Kristin and her husband to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She had helped us get through those first few weeks—dealing with the condo manager, getting us cell phones, finding all the heating, water and electric meters in the flat, giving us additional book on Hungary, Budapest, and Hungarian, and explaining how the washing machine worked. The food was great and we had a very nice conversation with them. None of us wanted to leave.
On Friday Fulbright took us to Pecs, one of three or four European Cultural Capitals for 2010. Pecs is a university town with the famous Zsolnay Ceramics and porcelain factory. We met with several of the Fulbrighters who were teaching or working in Pecs. One gave us a tour of the high school where he taught English as a second language and American literature studies. We also had tours of the Zsolnay museum and the Csontvary Museum, the latter containing the works of a rather eccentric 20th century painter. On Friday night we selected tickets to a Varadi Roma Concert. Unfortunately as I have discovered, almost all concerts these days are amplified as if they were blasting into an open field at Woodstock. But this was in a packed small room that couldn’t have seated more that 250 people. The music was good but our ears were ringing. On Saturday afternoon we had free time. We had lunch with Tom, Carol and Lori at a nice restaurant and then Tom took us on a tour of the countryside. We visited an old castle monastery north of Pecs, got lost looking for a second historical ruin and then couldn’t find the monument marking some major battle against the Turks. Afterwards we had a nice snack at Tom and Carol’s apartment before taking the train back to Budapest.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Cluj
We returned to Budapest on Saturday. Tari did several loads of laundry so we would have enough to last us for the next week in Cluj, Romania. On Sunday we went to Deak ter Erzsébet tér and took pictures of the art work representing inventions for women—a large washing machine you could stand in, a vacuum cleaner, an electric iron, a giant lipstick and eyelash mascara applicator with a woman’s pant suit in between, a giant leg with a nylon stocking and a bra.
We got up bright and early Monday morning to catch the train at Keleti pu for Cluj. It is about a seven hour train ride, but it was cheaper than flying and we arrived about the same time we would have if we had flown. We were in first class which had electric outlets so I could plug in my computer and work for quite a while.
We were met by Eugen and Melita his graduate student at the train station. I had met Eugen on my first trip to Cluj in 1999. MSU and Roger Hamlin had sent me there for a month as part of an exchange program with Babes Bolyai University on the topic of civil society. I was sent back two years later for another month and Eugen and I worked on a paper we later presented at APHA in Chicago. I was in Cluj a third time for a week on my own in 2003.
Eugen was going to arrange a conference presentation for me on Health Care Reform: Clinton to Obama. I thought it was going to be on Tuesday but he said it had to be moved to Thursday to accommodate some people who had classes on Tuesday. I had been revising my presentation almost daily as events over the past two week culminated in the passage of the Senate’s health care bill by the House, Obama signing it, and then the passage of the side car fix it bill in the House, then by the Senate. I expected Obama to sign it on Monday but he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. He did sign on it Wednesday so with that last revision, my presentation was complete.
On Monday night we went to the Cluj Jewish Community Seder. We arrive about 7:40 around sunset, but learned the actual service had begun around 7. It looked like they had gone straight through the service, for as we entered they were singing the traditional songs accompanied by a piano and violin. A woman with a trained voice sang Next Year in Jerusalem. So we sat down and after a few minutes began to eat. The food was very good—the matzo balls were really light. We guess about 100 people were there and two tables seemed to have the cantor and choir for they occasionally broke into song and at the end led a chain dance around the room. We sat at what was the head table with the congregation religious leader who was a professor of physical chemistry and his wife, the retired head of the Judaic studies and his wife, and the president of the community group.
On Tuesday we walked around the downtown area. It had changed quite a bit over the ten years. Two way streets were now one way—a sure sign of urban maturity; and a boulevard now has traffic in only one diretion, and thre traffic lanes on the other side were made into a pedestrian walkway. Several of the older hotels and restaurants were closed, and a few rather upscale restaurants had opened. The streets and sidewalks were in good condition. Our hotel, which was an old one had been refurbished.
That evening we had dinner with Shari a Fulbrighter from Rutgers teaching in Social Work. She was in the same department as Eugen but she didn’t know him. She had become very ill during the Fulbright orientation in Bucharest in February and had to be hospitalized. She was grateful for the visits from both the Romanian Fulbright office and someone from the US embassy in Bucharest. She was able to return to Cluj but had taken things easy the past several weeks. She had earned her bachelors and PhD degree from MSU and we quickly found many people in common, including one of her professors who had been a neighbor of ours in East Lansing. He retired and she had been unable to get in touch with him. We had visited him on the West Coast a few years ago and I later sent them both emails to put them back in touch.
We had lunch with the Brubecks on Wednesday. We got more details on their activities in Cluj and the complications of trying to arrange charity concerts in May despite the Cluj airport being closed for a week.
That afternoon we attended a social work class involving dealing with teen pregnancy and smoking. One of the student had planned a set of exercises, role playing etc. It was interesting. Someone sat near us and gave us a rough translation of the main points during the role playing.
My presentation was on Thursday afternoon. Before it began I was interviewed by two local TV stations and a newspaper reported. They wanted to know what could be learned for Romania from the US experience. I said that it was more a matter of political will and politics than rational economic decision making. A large majority was needed and Obama had just enough votes to carry in the Senate. Building a large majority in a Parliamentary system such as Romania might prove to be difficult. The Conservatives would not want anything changed and the liberals would want more than they could possibly get. Obama had spent the previous year making deals with the pharmaceutical companies, American Medical Association, the hospitals, unions etc. I also said that Romania was coming from a different situation than the US. Most Romanian physicians were either hospital employees or got paid by the one single insurance company, compared to US physicians who at one point were more like small businesses and were paid differing amounts by various insurance plans. Many US hospitals had been developed by religious groups so there were Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish hospitals. These had their own financial resources, and the hospitals also were paid by several different insurance plans. Finally physicians and hospital staff in Central and Eastern Europe were often given extra money under the table by patients and their families. When the move towards market insurance and deductibles was put in place a few years earlier, people rebelled. Why pay above the table for something that might be less than what you would get under the “old” system of paying under the table.
The presentation itself went about an hour with a translation after each slide. At first no one asked questions but then some did and the session went on for another twenty minutes or so. Shari was there as was Paul, another Fulbrighter whom I had met on his first Fulbright in 1999. He asked me what I thought would happen in the November elections. I said for the democrats, they would have trouble selling umbrellas on a rainy day. They just never seemed able to get their point across in a way that both captured the media attention and explained what their positions were. But the phasing in of the Health Care reforms over the year—things starting April 1st July 1st and October 1st would give them three built in opportunities to get the word out to different constituencies that would gain benefits. For the republicans, they might be able to take advantage of the confusion and hostility related to such a large change, but for the first time their slogan of Repeal and Restart was not on a par with Contract for America that they used in 1994 after defeating Clinton. While the right wing tea party could keep up the emotional fervor they could also split the party in the forthcoming primaries and possibly in November as well. I thought that was an even handed assessment without a true prediction.
The train ride back was uneventful. It was strange to realize that our home was now the flat, and it was good to get back to familiar surroundings. Having been in Germany and Romania, we were, however, afraid that we had lost what little Hungarian we had picked up.
We got up bright and early Monday morning to catch the train at Keleti pu for Cluj. It is about a seven hour train ride, but it was cheaper than flying and we arrived about the same time we would have if we had flown. We were in first class which had electric outlets so I could plug in my computer and work for quite a while.
We were met by Eugen and Melita his graduate student at the train station. I had met Eugen on my first trip to Cluj in 1999. MSU and Roger Hamlin had sent me there for a month as part of an exchange program with Babes Bolyai University on the topic of civil society. I was sent back two years later for another month and Eugen and I worked on a paper we later presented at APHA in Chicago. I was in Cluj a third time for a week on my own in 2003.
Eugen was going to arrange a conference presentation for me on Health Care Reform: Clinton to Obama. I thought it was going to be on Tuesday but he said it had to be moved to Thursday to accommodate some people who had classes on Tuesday. I had been revising my presentation almost daily as events over the past two week culminated in the passage of the Senate’s health care bill by the House, Obama signing it, and then the passage of the side car fix it bill in the House, then by the Senate. I expected Obama to sign it on Monday but he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. He did sign on it Wednesday so with that last revision, my presentation was complete.
On Monday night we went to the Cluj Jewish Community Seder. We arrive about 7:40 around sunset, but learned the actual service had begun around 7. It looked like they had gone straight through the service, for as we entered they were singing the traditional songs accompanied by a piano and violin. A woman with a trained voice sang Next Year in Jerusalem. So we sat down and after a few minutes began to eat. The food was very good—the matzo balls were really light. We guess about 100 people were there and two tables seemed to have the cantor and choir for they occasionally broke into song and at the end led a chain dance around the room. We sat at what was the head table with the congregation religious leader who was a professor of physical chemistry and his wife, the retired head of the Judaic studies and his wife, and the president of the community group.
On Tuesday we walked around the downtown area. It had changed quite a bit over the ten years. Two way streets were now one way—a sure sign of urban maturity; and a boulevard now has traffic in only one diretion, and thre traffic lanes on the other side were made into a pedestrian walkway. Several of the older hotels and restaurants were closed, and a few rather upscale restaurants had opened. The streets and sidewalks were in good condition. Our hotel, which was an old one had been refurbished.
That evening we had dinner with Shari a Fulbrighter from Rutgers teaching in Social Work. She was in the same department as Eugen but she didn’t know him. She had become very ill during the Fulbright orientation in Bucharest in February and had to be hospitalized. She was grateful for the visits from both the Romanian Fulbright office and someone from the US embassy in Bucharest. She was able to return to Cluj but had taken things easy the past several weeks. She had earned her bachelors and PhD degree from MSU and we quickly found many people in common, including one of her professors who had been a neighbor of ours in East Lansing. He retired and she had been unable to get in touch with him. We had visited him on the West Coast a few years ago and I later sent them both emails to put them back in touch.
We had lunch with the Brubecks on Wednesday. We got more details on their activities in Cluj and the complications of trying to arrange charity concerts in May despite the Cluj airport being closed for a week.
That afternoon we attended a social work class involving dealing with teen pregnancy and smoking. One of the student had planned a set of exercises, role playing etc. It was interesting. Someone sat near us and gave us a rough translation of the main points during the role playing.
My presentation was on Thursday afternoon. Before it began I was interviewed by two local TV stations and a newspaper reported. They wanted to know what could be learned for Romania from the US experience. I said that it was more a matter of political will and politics than rational economic decision making. A large majority was needed and Obama had just enough votes to carry in the Senate. Building a large majority in a Parliamentary system such as Romania might prove to be difficult. The Conservatives would not want anything changed and the liberals would want more than they could possibly get. Obama had spent the previous year making deals with the pharmaceutical companies, American Medical Association, the hospitals, unions etc. I also said that Romania was coming from a different situation than the US. Most Romanian physicians were either hospital employees or got paid by the one single insurance company, compared to US physicians who at one point were more like small businesses and were paid differing amounts by various insurance plans. Many US hospitals had been developed by religious groups so there were Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish hospitals. These had their own financial resources, and the hospitals also were paid by several different insurance plans. Finally physicians and hospital staff in Central and Eastern Europe were often given extra money under the table by patients and their families. When the move towards market insurance and deductibles was put in place a few years earlier, people rebelled. Why pay above the table for something that might be less than what you would get under the “old” system of paying under the table.
The presentation itself went about an hour with a translation after each slide. At first no one asked questions but then some did and the session went on for another twenty minutes or so. Shari was there as was Paul, another Fulbrighter whom I had met on his first Fulbright in 1999. He asked me what I thought would happen in the November elections. I said for the democrats, they would have trouble selling umbrellas on a rainy day. They just never seemed able to get their point across in a way that both captured the media attention and explained what their positions were. But the phasing in of the Health Care reforms over the year—things starting April 1st July 1st and October 1st would give them three built in opportunities to get the word out to different constituencies that would gain benefits. For the republicans, they might be able to take advantage of the confusion and hostility related to such a large change, but for the first time their slogan of Repeal and Restart was not on a par with Contract for America that they used in 1994 after defeating Clinton. While the right wing tea party could keep up the emotional fervor they could also split the party in the forthcoming primaries and possibly in November as well. I thought that was an even handed assessment without a true prediction.
The train ride back was uneventful. It was strange to realize that our home was now the flat, and it was good to get back to familiar surroundings. Having been in Germany and Romania, we were, however, afraid that we had lost what little Hungarian we had picked up.
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