Posted on 08/26/2012 8:43:05 AM PDT by artichokegrower
Havana --
Cuba's system of free medical care, long considered a birthright by its citizens and trumpeted as one of the communist government's great successes, is not immune to cutbacks under Raul Castro's drive for efficiency.
The health sector has already endured millions of dollars in budget cuts and tens of thousands of layoffs, and it became clear this month that Castro is looking for more ways to save when the newspaper voice of the Communist Party, Granma, published daily details for two weeks on how much the government spends on everything from anesthetics and acupuncture to orthodontics and organ transplants.
It's part of a wider media campaign that seems geared to discourage frivolous use of medical services, to explain or blunt fears of a drop-off in care and to remind Cubans to be grateful that health care is still free despite persistent economic woes. But it's also raising the eyebrows of outside analysts, who predict further cuts or significant changes to what has been a pillar of the socialist system implanted after the 1959 revolution.
The theme of the Granma pieces, posters in clinics and ads on state TV is the same: "Your health care is free, but how much does it cost?"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Michael Moore will have to do a sequel to “Sicko” to outline the changes in the worker’s paradise of Cuba.
Quick! Someone notify Michael Moore!
Apparently I type too slowly.
Amazingly, health care providers won’t work for free, manufacturers won’t give medical supplies to hospitals and clinics for free, and the people gathering/mining/growing the raw materials won’t give them to the manufacturers for free. Yet people expect health care for free?
People should pay for their own health care. Even in Cuba.
This is the real face of cuban commiecare:
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
If that is facing a cut....oh boy.
Cuts? Real cuts, or cuts in the rate of growth, what we call cuts here?
Hmm... I don’t see Cuba having to deal with a large influx of illegal aliens sucking up all their medical resources either. Lieberals, take a good hard look!
The entire narrative of free health care in Cuba is a myth and a fraud. First of all, the population was nutritionally deprived in a way that beggars description - I’m going back to the early 1980s when they were still a satellite of the USSR. Most people went to bed hungry. I’m talking.about educated, employed, white collar people. Food was rationed so that a family of four had one chicken a week. That was the protein. There were no fresh vegetables. Ever. Even citrus fruit, which grows there, was a rarity. Fish was hard to come by. Shrimp an unheard of luxury. The diet was mainly rice, potatoes, yuca and beans with some cardboard-like bread.
Then, to get medical care, you, or someone in your family would have to donate blood - not for you - the Cuban govt was in the blood bank business and sold blood on the world market.
And even as a satellite of the.USSR, there were no sheets or towels in the hospitals. And also NO MEDICINE. I had friends who were teachers.who were having a baby, and the pregnant wife wept with gratitude when I brought her vitamins. Again, in the 1980s. It got worse every year.
I knew scores of doctors who did not have access to even simple over the counter type medicine like aspirin, antacids, inhalers, antihistimines. Even for themselves.
The doctors were not rigorously educated and trained the way they are in normal countries, where you have to be smart to get into med school. It’s not even imaginable who they had as doctors - think of how the standards have been lowered for our police forces, and you’ll have an idea.
Of you saw the number of crippled and deformed people there - it’s like an Ingmar Bergman movie set in the middle ages....
The entire narrative of free health care in Cuba is a myth and a fraud. First of all, the population was nutritionally deprived in a way that beggars description - I’m going back to the early 1980s when they were still a satellite of the USSR. Most people went to bed hungry. I’m talking.about educated, employed, white collar people. Food was rationed so that a family of four had one chicken a week. That was the protein. There were no fresh vegetables. Ever. Even citrus fruit, which grows there, was a rarity. Fish was hard to come by. Shrimp an unheard of luxury. The diet was mainly rice, potatoes, yuca and beans with some cardboard-like bread.
Then, to get medical care, you, or someone in your family would have to donate blood - not for you - the Cuban govt was in the blood bank business and sold blood on the world market.
And even as a satellite of the.USSR, there were no sheets or towels in the hospitals. And also NO MEDICINE. I had friends who were teachers.who were having a baby, and the pregnant wife wept with gratitude when I brought her vitamins. Again, in the 1980s. It got worse every year.
I knew scores of doctors who did not have access to even simple over the counter type medicine like aspirin, antacids, inhalers, antihistimines. Even for themselves.
The doctors were not rigorously educated and trained the way they are in normal countries, where you have to be smart to get into med school. It’s not even imaginable who they had as doctors - think of how the standards have been lowered for our police forces, and you’ll have an idea.
Of you saw the number of crippled and deformed people there - it’s like an Ingmar Bergman movie set in the middle ages....
I was amazed they even did organ transplants. Cuba’s medical system has long been supplemented by donations from the mainland.
Well maybe the Cuban Nurse’s Association can go on strike for better pay and work conditions.
Any idiot scribbler who writes about “free” health care should have a very large rock dropped on their heads. No governmental system is free, and certainly not Cuba’s.
Fidel bringing in a Spanish doctor when he just about croaked a few years ago says it all about the “wonderful” Cuban health system.
Excellent, excellent point.
And likely Obama has done. Lots of missing money not reported about much.
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