It's been almost two years since I've been seen at a hospital. The last time was in that November of beatings and kidnapping when my lower back was in very bad shape. I learned a hard lesson on that occasion: given the choice between the Hippocratic oath and ideological fidelity, many physicians prefer to violate the privacy of their patients -- often compared to the secrets of the confessional -- rather than to oppose, with the truth, the State that employs them. The examples of this pouring forth on official television in recent months have strengthened my lack of confidence in the Cuban public health system. So I am healing myself with plants that grow on my balcony, I exercise every day to avoid getting sick, and I've even bought myself a Vademécum -- a Physician's Desk Reference -- should I need to self-prescribe at some point. But despite my "medical revolt," I haven't failed to observe and investigate the growing deterioration of this sector.
Among the recent hospital cuts, the most notable have to do with resources for diagnostics. The doctors receive greatly reduced allocations for X-rays, ultrasounds and MRIs which they must distribute among their patients. Anecdotes about fractures that are set without first being X-rayed, or abdominal pains that become complicated because they can't do a scan, are so common we're no longer surprised. Such a situation is also vulnerable to patronage, where those who can offer a gift, or surreptitiously pay, obtain better medical care than do others. The cheese given to the nurse and the indispensable hand soap that many offer the dentist noticeably accelerate treatment and complement the undervalued salaries of those medical professionals.
A thermometer is an object long-missing from the shelves of pharmacies operating in local currency, while the hard currency stores have the most modern digital models. Getting a pair of glasses to alleviate near-sightedness can take months through subsidized State channels, or twenty-four hours at Miramar Optical where you pay in convertible pesos. Nor do the bodies who staff the hospitals escape these contrasts: we can consult the most competent neurosurgeon in the entire Caribbean region, but he doesn't have even an aspirin to give us. These are the chiaroscuros that make us sick, and exhaust patients, their families, and the medical personnel themselves. And that leave us feeling defrauded by a conquest -- long brandished before our faces -- that has crumbled, and they won't even let us complain about it.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
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Many treatments we take for granted aren't available at all, except to the Communist elite or foreigners with dollars. For them, Castro keeps hospitals equipped with the best medicines and technologies available.
What is it that leads people to value theoretically "free" health care, even when it's lousy or nonexistent, over a free society that actually delivers health care? You might have to deal with creditors after you go to the emergency room in America, but no one is denied medical care here; even the poorest Americans are getting far better medical services than most Cubans.
A number of key sectors of the economy, such as health care, remain governed by centralized planning, which inevitably leads to chronic material shortages and inefficiency. In a centralized economy, forces of supply and demand are inevitably out of balance, leading to underproduction of goods.
I was in Cuba not too long ago and everyone I met looked very healthy....for free.
The people are not going to overthrow the government if they are happy. The suffering is the exact effect which pro-embargo people are expecting. If the concept of embargo works, then the next step is to wait for people to overthrow the government. If not, not much will happen to the pro-embargo people.
In 2007 USA sold to Cuba goods for $582 000 000
In 2006 sold goods for $484 000 000
In 2008 sold goods for $680 000 000
USA supplies Cuba almost all food the island needs, including%u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026..sugar!!!!!!!!!
In the years of the soviet subside to Cuba, the dictatorship received from Russia $360 000 000 000 cash and all needed, oil, weapons, wood, machinery, trucks. iron, paper and spear parts.
Only the received cash were equivalent to 100 Plan Marshall %u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026.. remember people%u2026%u2026%u2026 with only one Plan Marchall Europe rose from devastation to welfare after WWII%u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026 so Embargo does not exist.
Furthermore medicines and medical supplies never were subject of commercial restriction.
Taking pleasure somebody's bad luck is not seemly.
(Reuters) - The United States ranked among communist Cuba%u2019s top five trading partners for the first time in 2007 despite the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, as U.S. agriculture sales increased by $100 million. Trade data for 2007 posted on the Web site of Cuba%u2019s National Statistics Office (www.one.cu) placed the United States fifth at $582 million, compared with $484 million in 2006, including shipping costs.
The United States, which began selling food to Cuba in 2002 under an amendment to the embargo, placed seventh in 2006 and 2005.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/14/us-cuba-usa-trade-idUSN1447847620080814
US Targeting Cuba's Health-Care System | Common Dreams
"...The United States sees the Cuban health system and Havana’s sharing of such as a means of Cuba winning friends and allies in the Third World, particularly Latin America; a situation sharply in conflict with long-standing US policy to isolate Cuba..."
Those huge amounts of money sure destination will be for more killing, more harassment and repression on Cuba%u2019s people. What some ones calls here policy of USA to isolate Cuba is just the defense act of common Cubans in exile of their fellow landsman in the island implemented by some laws congressman and senators elected by the Cuban nation in exile worked to keep in place.
All the Americans without health care insurance aren't doing too well either.