The Economist Refutes Michael Moore
On Cuba, that is:
Though the state still trains armies of doctors, a third of these are deployed overseas in “soft-power” missions. Pharmacies are generally ill-stocked. In many hospitals patients must provide their own sheets, food and dressings. Neglect of infrastructure means that almost 10% of the population lacks access to clean drinking water.
HT:Jason Shafrin.
Fidel Castro went to Spain for surgery a few years back. While other heads of state come to the U.S. (including the former prime minister of Italy), Castro flew to a European country that is not known for the quality of its medical care. By most accounts, the surgery did not go well. There’s no evidence that it was the doctors’ fault. I’ve also heard the vast majority of Cuban-trained doctors do not come even close to having the medical knowledge typically held by an American primary care physician (although there is nothing wrong with that if it increase access to primary care in Cuba).
Professor Milica Bookman from St. Joseph’s University is the co-author of a book on medical tourism destinations. She reported that Cuba is nowhere close to being a medical tourism destination for high quality medical care. Since medical tourists represent the elite (cash-paying) patients for a country like Cuba, I can only assume the local get care that’s even lower in quality.
While Cuba’s system has it’s positives and negatives, we must remember that Cubans in that system have no freedom in regards to healthcare. Anyone remember how Cuba dealt with HIV/AIDS? Quarantines that, in some places, were better described as concentration camps.
It’s quite interesting how Cuba’s President goes to Europe for medical care, and Venezuela’s President (best known as Hugo Chavez, former Castro’s right hand man) goes to Cuba for cancer treatment…which as expected, hasn’t shown any improvement so far.
So confusing…
I’m undecided on whether the embargo needs to end – for economic reasons, I’m inclined to think it should end.
But as Alex stated, the authoritarian policies that have made their way into Cuba’s health care system should give chills to any American liberal.
@Otis, the embargo was initially enacted when Castro nationalized property formerly owned by US business. A relationship between Castro and Khruhschev developed after (and largely because of) the embargo. It was expanded after the Missile Crisis even though Russia basically gave the middle finger to Cuba when it was resolved. However, it was still justified as an “anti-communist” embargo until the Soviet Union fell. Only then did Clinton make the embargo law, and only then was it justified on the basis of Cuba’s human rights violations.
When the UN authorized an embargo on Haiti in 1991, we exempted ourselves. When Clinton put troops in Haiti in 1994, he did so with authorization of the UN. That was called “Operation Uphold Democracy” and it did nothing of the sort.
An “American liberal” should get chills at the things I described, not how Cuba treats its citizens, because we can change those things. We would have more leverage with Castro’s human rights violations (which don’t even compare to our own by any standard–not that we care) if we traded with him.
The embargo is there because they nationalized American business interests in Cuba. Every effort by any country in the globe has been met with similar, often more brutal, retaliation from the US military. That ought to tell you what’s driving our economic policy toward Cuba. We’re a nation of murderers and our motive is that all-important profit one.
@Alex, while some of their methods were rightly criticized, others are very praiseworthy and Cuba now has the lowest HIV/AIDS rate in the Americas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/health/a-regimes-tight-grip-lessons-from-cuba-in-aids-control.html?pagewanted=all
Would you say the “gay cancer scare” had better effects in America? How many gay people have died because our society can’t muster itself to help its arguable most stigmatized group of citizens, despite the fact that lesbians have lower HIV rates than straight women?
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/11/aids-still-a-gay-disease-in-america/249242/
Ok I have just been to Cuba. Specifically Guantanamo City. I stayed for the most part at the family home of my girlfriend I met in the UK. Whilst the poverty; corruption and standards of morality are deplorable for a largely captive population to compound everything the medical system is also disgraceful. I have to admit that I was not expecting much. I was not disappointed. My girlfriend has a severely handicapped son following a failed abortion (the medical authorities would not provide the surgical abortion needed and the pre-birth scans failed to pickup any abnormalities because ‘their equipment was old’). At the local medical center where we went most days with her son for good remedial treatment we saw lots of people and far too many young children with serious birth defects. I also met a lovely young girl down the street from where I was staying who had cancer and had already had an arm amputated. The cancer had spread and she was on Chemo at the nearest Chemo unit in Santiago de Cuba – around sixty miles away. The family had to make their own way there. They survive on perhaps $15 per month plus food rations. A taxi would be around $45 round trip minimum. Trains are a joke, buses pretty much the same – often fully enclosed old trucks with slit holes for windows. No direct flights by plane. She needed to go fortnightly. Before I left another woman across the street who had a young daughter went into hospital with a brain hemorrhage (she later died). Everything is basic because there is no money. Nothing gets repaired, or repaired properly. Chemists are basic with very little in them and to be fair not many can afford them anyway. I have strong suspicions over the motives of the government; the standard of prescribed drugs; if they field test them on a captive population (my girlfriend’s sister in law had an unnecessary injection whilst pregnant that the family feel caused serious health problems for their young son since he was born) and the neglect of their duty of care.