Cuban Healthcare
Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 08:35AM Google "Cuba healthcare."
Voila, you now have in front of you the world's largest collection of Marxist apologia/propaganda that exists on the planet.
OK, maybe not the biggest, but at least you know how we felt when we tried to find an assessment that sounded even the tiniest bit balanced. It was all very Manchurian Candidate: Cuba's healthcare system is the kindest, warmest, most fabulous healthcare system anyone has ever encountered and just think how even more fabulous it would be if that mean, nasty United States would lift the embargo.
At this point we defer to our betters:
Employees must was their hands before returning to workJuan Paxety: The myth goes on: Cuban Healthcare. Succinct. Fisks a typical article about the marvels of Cuban healthcare.
therealcuba.com:
Pictures that are hard to stomach. No amount of Photoshop
technology could have produced these and considering the breadth of the
subject matter, makes a very compelling case for the deep and abject
poverty that ordinary Cubans endure. From the page cited browse
around to Havana Hospital for pictures of Hospital Clinico Quirugico.
The emphasis is on prevention rather than cure, as there are often shortages of medicines. As well as their day to day work, the family doctors have detailed prevention programmes to follow, consisting of categorising each patient yearly into a group (healthy, at risk, ill or chronically ill, and disabled) and visiting them in their home a certain number of times a year, according to what group they're in. Social factors, such as sanitation, are then further categorised, and even the family itself is labelled as "functional" or "dysfunctional." It felt as though Big Brother was truly watching; but it is accepted and is an important part of their health care.We love that last sentence. Now we understand how the surveillance method mentioned in Cuba and HIV works. It isn't trench-coated shadow figures who are keeping tabs on your extremely private activities: it's Marcus Welby, the kindly, wise family physician.
The CIA Country Factbook has provided excellent grist for the propagandist, especially with respect to statistical evidence of the population's health. Cuba's life expectancy rates, as measured conventionally, are comparable to ours and its infant mortality rates are even better. One caveat, and this is true for all international census statistics: the definition of certain parameters is often left to the country compiling the statistics. [This is one of the reasons the US often looks bad in the infant mortality stats: we count all births but most other countries do not include premature babies in the live birth count; those most likely to die are thereby factored out of the statistic]. Anyway, it occurred to us that with such comprehensive care, the detection of a weak fetus might cause the mother to have an abortion (file under collectivist ideal, prevention better than cure, etc.) and the lovely future doctor Anna provides:
The major health problems in Cuba are the same as in any Western country: heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. The doctor is still akin to God; patients respect their doctors and generally do what they tell them to. Abortion is common, and, although family planning programmes have been set up, women have had on average about four abortions by the time they have their first child. What we would call a medical abortion in the United Kingdom they call "menstrual regulation," and it's a regular occurrence. Infertility is roughly as common as it is here, although there are no services providing in vitro fertilisation. Family values are held firm, and the shortage of housing means that three generations often live together. The policlinic was piloting an "adopt a granny" scheme, where elderly people with no local family would live with an adopted one. The scheme is so far successful, even in its infancy.Factoring in abortions, oops..ahem!, menstrual regulation, we can create a "life expectancy at conception" statistic that wouldn't be nearly so handsome for Fidel's Utopia. Just a couple of notes: free rent = shortage of housing and piloting an "adopt a granny" scheme, where elderly people with no local family would live with an adopted one. The scheme is so far successful, even in its infancy. Anna, Anna, Anna: how could it NOT be successful?
bbmoe
In a related post, Cuban Prisoner of Conscience,
Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal describes the
treatment of Dr. Osvaldo Biscet. He had the affrontery to
present the results of a study he had done on the use of the drug
Rivanol to abort advanced pregnancies in Cuba (one drug that apparently
isn't in short supply):
The practice is widespread in Cuba, including its common use among girls as young as 12, who during their government-mandated school time in the countryside without their parents, often become pregnant.We don't suppose these babies made their way into any infant mortality statistics. Dr. Biscet is currently incarcerated for his outspoken opposition to Fidel's healthcare plan.
Dr. Biscet has written that the study proved "the murder of infants born alive, denied of medical assistance." According to his report "the umbilical cord was cut and they were allowed to bleed to death or they were wrapped alive in paper and asphyxiated." His opposition to these practices made him a counterrevolutionary and qualified him for the corresponding government program: He was fired, lost his home and was set upon by mobs that beat him and harassed his family.
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Reader Comments (5)
True Socialism. Shortage of apartments, they shift an old crone into your home. One bedroom with mother, father, two kids, and the new granny sleeps on the floor in the kitchen.
Can you see Kevin Costner or Barbara Streisand taking one in with their families, or Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover moving one into their Cuban mansions?
Ye Gads, Sandy, it's Daddy Warbucks.
Sorry, Matt. We are exercising our right to employ the Cuban Model with respect to free speech on this blog. Quid Nimis is not, nor will it ever be a forum for Communists to advocate abortion, oppression, state control of individuals, or the really crappy use of the English language. You are hereby censored. If you don't like it, get an inner tube and set yourself adrift on the open seas and pray to Fidel that you make landfall on the Worker's Island Paradise. We wish you God speed and note that this suggested mode of transportation utilizes entirely sustainable rainforest products and poses no threat to the environment through the emission of greenhouse gasses. It has the added advantage of promoting healthy populations of Galeocerdo cuvieri, a high-food-chain species that serves the purpose of culling weaker, less fit forms of life.
Socialist paradises don't have no private ownership.
I had a letter from a Cuban who says that doctor's in Cuba cannot report the deaths of infants, that it is covered up, hence Castro's talk concerning the "lowest infant death rate in the hemisphere" is nothing but lies. Teachers must give good grades to failing students in order to live up to his talk about education, or lose their jobs. Free education? Students work in the cane fields five days a week, not three afternoons as he claims. What kind of an education is that, other than to train them as serfs?
Sex in the cane fields is one diversion on a hot afternoon. They don't get paid, they get laid. Please excuse the terminology, but it is the truth of things.