Had a friend who grew up in Cuba.
He said If you went to the hospital, you had to bring your own toiletries, sheets and bedding and in many cases, I kid you not...your own medication.
This guy wasn’t the type to lie.
About as definitive as it gets when you're dealing with a Communist.
I had a friend whose family escaped after Castro. Somehow, his father got out before Cuba fell, his mom and brothers had to follow. Before they boarded a plane to leave, a government official approached his mother and took her wedding ring, declaring it belonged to the state.
That is the case with just about every "free health care" I ran across.
When your doctor said you needed antibiotics your relatives had to go down to the pharmacy and buy the antibiotic and the syringe. They had to bring you food so you did not go hungry.
The doctors were either so bad that the only job they could get was working for the government or they were doing their four hours a week required charity work.
Actually, before Castro, Cuba had one of the highest standards of living in the hemisphere, and also, I think, the third highest literacy rate. Literacy declined after the Communists took over.
Was there poverty? Of course, but in pre-Communist Cuba there was also a functioning economy and things were improving. Batista may not have been a nice guy, but he was engaged in massive infrastructure projects to modernize the island, such as highways and housing developments.
But the foolish university world and the children of the well-off, then as now, had the leisure and arrogance to be ready targets for Marxist infiltration - by people such as the Argentinian Che Guevara, among others. And they destroyed a country that was full of promise (not to mention good music and great rum!).
He said If you went to the hospital, you had to bring your own toiletries, sheets and bedding and in many cases, I kid you not...your own medication.
`````
Is true and that’s one of the good things: self-service medicine