Immediate and Long Term Effects of Public Information. The National Health Card in Romania
Immediate and Long Term Effects of Public Information. The National Health Card in Romania

Summary/Abstract: The information about the health of the population, about social measures taken towards health protection and safety are some major issues in the public space. The information projected into the public space bear the prints of the political discourse, because in Romania the government was politically invested when our analysis was conducted, that is between January and November 2015. Any public information generated by a ministry became a governmental print, and as a result - political discourse. Along with the sociopolitical contextualization, the political - religion relations would have in this case an unexpected impact and reaction within a segment of the population as a consequence of construing the religious significance of the insignia on health cards. The principle of cooperation and conversational engagement would constitute the framework for analyzing the conversational maxims, through examples regarding the form and effect of the information on health cards in the public space. In the case of issuing the cards, a religious communication barrier was also raised. The word card was subject to misinterpretation (backwards it spells drac, which is the Romanian term for devil) as well as the contents of the card chip (it includes the number 666, the number of evil). The Romanian Patriarchate asked the Ministry of Health to clarify the health card’s general advantages for patients and healthcare providers.

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