>>>>Emptying Cuba's hospitals and clinics, Castro sent these doctors to the slums of Caracas and elsewhere, leaving Cubans themselves without doctors. Havana's public hospitals, outside the tourist zones, are bereft of any medical care as doctors disappear abroad.
The USA does this too. This is how we did our rural medical tour.
When medical students are close to graduation, they get a seminar on how they can do the right thing and volunteer to go the the rural medical tour which sends doctors into to needed areas. As a reward, the student loans get deferred.
The unfortunate thing is, this tour did defer our loans; but the interest on the loans didn't stop. Real nice catch 22. I don't think we will ever be able to pay back those loans.
All the areas the doctors were sent to were county and state run facilities. They don't pay much at all. So that keeps the overhead for the facilities low.
These state and county run facitilities feed off of DHS, state and federal medicare/aid match reimbursements. The more uninsured patients, the more they can bill for.
Lower overhead to run county and state medical factilities, the feeding frenzie for reimbursement billing, and the malpractice breaks given to these facilities over private practice keeps the private practices at a disadvantage.
>>>Defecting doctors say they are essentially there for a political purpose rather than to practice medicine. Their "free" medical care amounts to industrial "dumping," putting real doctors out of business in places such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Central America, all of which have seen medical-personnel strikes over these "free" and often less-trained Cuban doctors.<<<<
Sheesh! Same result in the USA too!
Just wonder if any of these “Doctors” could pass any civilized worlds equivalent of a “Boards” exam?
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How very interesting, Calpernia.
Thank you for sharing.
AR