Poverty Doesn’t Stop Cuba From Keeping Its Black Citizens Healthy. So What’s America’s Excuse?

[Judi Lynn]

Poverty Doesn’t Stop Cuba From Keeping Its Black Citizens Healthy. So What’s America’s Excuse?

Cuba is poorer and, due to the embargo, has had less access to drugs and medical equipment, yet its citizens live just as long, if not longer than people in the U.S.

By: Tonyaa J. Weathersbee
Posted: June 27, 2016

Whenever I hear Cubans talk about their nation’s advancements in health care, and when I think about where the U.S. is on all this, what I hear is a tale of two scarcities. The tales, however, end differently for the people of color who are the main characters.

Because Cuba has, for the past five decades, struggled to bring health care to all its citizens in spite of a U.S. embargo that cripples its ability to purchase drugs and medical equipment, it has kept most of its people well because it cannot afford for them to get sick.

“If you don’t see the doctor, the doctor will come to see you,” Juan Jacomino, a Radio Havana journalist who acted as our guide during a recent trip to one of the island’s many polyclinics, told me.

So Cuba has taken great steps to build health care around family and community. Physicians and nurses share the same neighborhoods with their patients. If someone isn’t going for their checkups, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

More:
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/06/poverty-doesnt-stop-cuba-from-keeping-its-black-citizens-healthy-so-whats-americas-excuse/

Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016161892

[anoNY42]

1. Differences between the two healthcare systems

I bet what this comes down to is the fact that our healthcare professionals are much more highly compensated than those in Cuba. It would be hilariously expensive to have doctors or nurses doing home visits for preventative care in the US.

Now, if you think about the difference in urgent or surgical care, which would you send your own child to, a US hospital or a Cuban hospital?

[Judi Lynn]

2. As I've said before, "you have a lot to learn about how the Cuban health system works."

Why on earth do you imagine Cuban people have such amazing health statistics, the highest in Latin America?

Because their "good medicine" is going to the parties you've posted?

We have DU posters who've both gone to tourist doctors in Cuba, and to domestic doctors, when taken by their friends in emergencies. Both services got glowing reviews.

Please don't try to post things like that you can't back up with legitimate sources. People here do research what they don't know, and there are MANY who have known the truth about Cuba, either from research, or from in person discovery.

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Please take a moment to scan the Vital Statistics from the United Nations on the Cuba Report:

Statistics

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_statistics.html

Please compare them with those of the United States:

Statistics

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/usa_statistics.html

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
May 20, 2014
American Health Care: a Cuban Fix

by Mateo Pimentel

Despite the fact that the US altogether spends arguably more on public health than any other economic force in the West, next to nothing about its healthcare system is democratic. Like most everything else, this industry, or market sector, only exists to serve profit motive. Any ostensibly beneficial components, which might appear to favor the marginalized, are little more than the usual rotten fruits of a welfare capitalism that keeps the poor, working class divided against itself. As the system grows more and more costly, the rich get richer and the poor invariably continue to suffer. Ultimately, radically democratic change in American healthcare is necessary to fix the problem, and Cuba holds the answer.

. . .

A country like Cuba cannot afford to allow private enterprises to milk public pockets, nor does it want that for itself. Cuba has invoked a radically democratic means to ensure public health standards rise rather than fall in earnest. The result? Cuban healthcare far exceeds that of the US, and it does a far better job treating its body politic than America does her own. The fact is that Cuban healthcare is second to none. So, Americans should choose to learn from Cuba’s example, rather than falling victim to the systematized rhetoric that claims all things Cuban, and therefore all things communist, are inherently evil and of no use to them. Actually looking to some of the key components of Cuba’s sustainably democratic model would save the US populace both money and lives. The following are a six Cuban methods which the American people should adopt – forcefully, if necessary – in order to make healthcare cheaper, more democratic, and universal for all people living within the US.

Access

In order to shrink the existing disparity in its people’s healthcare, Cuba endeavored for complete accessibility. Increased accessibility thus led to the adoption of a universal system, one which yielded unprecedented levels of healthcare for all Cubans. By 1999, Cuba boasted one doctor per every 175 Cubans. With greater access and a new system predicated on it, new medical jobs were also created around the country.

Ingenuity and Innovation

Cuban policy allocates large amounts of funding to research. A poorer nation than the US, Cuba actually strives to comply with World Health Organization recommendations: Cuba funds a percentage of all health-related costs, as well a portion of its research and training programs. This is also born out of necessity; due to the US and its embargo-driven transgressions against the poor island nations, many vaccinations had to be developed in-house, rather than traded-for, with other nations. Still, Cuba has funded many break-through revolutions in the medical field. The US needs to have at least the same policy toward funding its medical research.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/20/american-health-care-a-cuban-fix/

[anoNY42]

4. So your point is that we can have cheap healthcare like the Cubans

if we pay our doctors $50 a month, like they do in Cuba? Is it still a crime in Cuba to criticize the government (including it's healthcare policies and practices)?

I am all for single-payer, but I would rather learn lessons from the European nations that I have visited, then take a chance on a health system run by a government that would jail anyone who criticizes the level of care they receive...

[Zorro]

5. Well...ya gotta admit...Cuban doctors are surely more up-to-date

on current Santeria rituals than their US counterparts.

[anoNY42]

6. I dunno about Santeria

But here in the US we have them beat when it comes to fighting against those evil vaccines... /sarc

[Zorro]

3. I'd definitely send my child to a US hospital.

No question about it.