Posted on 11/30/2016 8:26:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
On public-access TV in 1985, Bernie Sanders defended an element of Fidel Castro’s regime: It was rarely mentioned that Castro provided health care to his country. Sanders grumbled that the same could not be said of then-President Reagan.
The comment came back to haunt Sanders in the wake of Castro’s death. On Sunday on ABC’s This Week, host Martha Raddatz played the old clip and then asked Sanders if he was aware that “this was a brutal dictatorship despite the romanticized version that some Americans have of Cuba.” She reminded Sanders that Castro rationed food and punished dissidents, then hit him with the big question: “So have you changed your view of Castro since 1985?”
Sanders said he didn’t exactly remember the context for his comment (being 31 years ago) but that Cubans “do have a decent health-care system.”
Many consider it more than decent. After a visit to Havana in 2014, the director-general of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan called for other countries to follow Cuba’s example in health care. Years before, the World Health Organization’s ranking of countries with “the fairest mechanism for health-system finance” put Cuba first among Latin American and Caribbean countries (and far ahead of the United States).
Cuba has long had a nearly identical life expectancy to the United States, despite widespread poverty. The humanitarian-physician Paul Farmer notes in his book Pathologies of Power that there’s a saying in Cuba: “We live like poor people, but we die like rich people.” Farmer also notes that the rate of infant mortality in Cuba has been lower than in the Boston neighborhood of his own prestigious hospital, Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s.
All of this despite Cuba spending just $813 per person annually on health care compared with America’s $9,403.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
The less you have the simpler life is.
Try it. Do you have boxes of stuff you have no idea what’s in them. Well, if you have been doing fine without the box of stuff, chances are you don’t need it, so chuck it.
Outward clutter is a reflection of our inward being. Decluttering your living space will declutter your being and you wil begin to live simpler and more likely a longer life.
It’s been proven that extreme caloric restrictions, like under 1500 calories a day, will lead to an extended life span. Who knew communist society could be so good for you!
It was rarely mentioned that Castro provided health care to his country......All slave owners care for their property.
Starting tomorrow we force Doctors, Nurses and Caretakers to work for slave wages.....Too late. They don’t have a MINIMUM wage, but the do have a maximum wage law. Doctors, grocery laborers and prostitutes make the same.
Poverty have forced the population to live without an excess of food, alcohol and tobacco and few family cars - while a police state has denied them the drugs (legal & illegal) that are widely used in the US.
Voila! Lower death from diabetes, cancer, car accidents, drug use, etc..
And 100 times the misery
No obesity, that’s for sure.
“living” in cuba is very different than living in a free country. Give me the free country anytime.
How in the hell do they think that they get honest statistics from the Castro regime?
who compiled the base numbers?
does this count the quarantined terminally ill from sexually transmitted illnesses?
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