"Every single Castro supporter clings to this healthcare thing like it is some kind of holy grail. In a debate, the fact that Cuba has the most political prisoners in the world is ignored. The fact that Cubans on the island lack even the most basic of necessities is ignored. Tourism apartheid is ignored. Everything is ignored save for the free healthcare and 100% literacy.
"Of course, none of these 'free healthcare!' cheerleaders have ever been to a Cuban hospital. They've never been to a Cuban clinic. Hospitals and clinics serving the average Cuban, that is."
I wish there was a way to allow all of Castro's leftist apologists spend a few months in a Cuban gulag and then see how they feel.
Of course it's a sham...Cuba, after all, is a country-sized Communist prison camp.
Duh! I am shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover commies and their leftie stooges here are liars.
Yep, and their supposedly "great health care system for the masses" has none of the emergency care infrastructure we and the rest of the free world take for granted - no ambulances, no EMTs, no way to get to the hospital for most people. Well not exactly - normally your neighbors will try to round up a donkey cart to pull you to the hospital if you are having a heart attack. Sometimes the poor victim is even alive when he gets there.
Another myth busted.
bump.
That could be amusing. A "friend of a friend" was a Cuban apologist. She is an artist, and for years had claimed that Cuba and other Communist countries supported artists while America didn't.
She went to Cuba a few years ago to start her new life as an "appreciated artist", and found out that Cuba indeed supports artists; they just have to work long hours in factories painting gewgaws for tourists to buy.
PS. She's back here working as an art teacher and painting on her own time. She's doing well, and doesn't discuss politics anymore. :-)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
If there is still a big Cuban connection with Angola, the Marburg outbreak there may test Cuban medicine somewhat.
Healthcare in Cuba is free, and worth every penny.
How do they come up with 100% literacy?
By killing all adults that are illiterate???
"Cuba's accomplishments in primary care involve low-technology and organizational innovations such as neighborhood-based family medicine."
"Vaccination is a major focus of the Cuban health system, whose childhood immunization program has led to the eradication of measles, mumps and polio, as well as a 30-fold decrease in the incidence of meningitis."
"There are projects to develop vaccines against salmonella and dengue hemorrhagic fever -- a particularly difficult project, as vaccines must be effective against all four dengue viruses to prevent disease."
"Cuba's biotechnology industry is one of the most advanced in emerging countries. Fidel Castro has vowed that Cuba will become the only developing nation to be a significant player in the world's biotechnology and pharmaceuticals industries, and a concerted national effort instigated by Castro himself has made independent progress unmatched elsewhere in the developing world."
"Cuban biotech research has added several vaccines to the national immunization program, and is responsible for drugs such as recombinant streptokinase, the "cloudburst" for heart attack victims produced at a fraction of the cost of imports."
"Cuba has produced a number of valuable medicinal goods, such as epiderman growth factor and policosanol (PPG), an oral medication derived from sugar cane that lowers cholesterol and atherogenic lipoproteins."
"Cuba would be capable of producing biological warfare agents, and Cuba's biotechnology industry could produce many types of toxins. Defector reports claim that the civilian-run Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana is a "front" for a military research center that manufactures anthrax and bubonic plague."
"In February 1997 Cuban President Fidel Castro compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb and warned that if the dragon tried to eat the lamb, it would find its meal "poisoned" -- setting off speculation concerning Cuba's biological warfare capabilities."
ping