"Sicko" Presents False View of Cuba's Health System

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Robo

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"Sicko" Presents False View of Cuba's Health System

by Ryan Balis



Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore claims his latest documentary, "Sicko," will "rip the band-aid off America's health care industry,"1 which Moore sees as wrongfully dominated by private drug companies and profit-seeking HMOs.

In part of "Sicko," released June 29, Moore takes a group of ill 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for health treatment.2 Though most of the workers on Moore's two-week sojourn in March 2007 were insured,3 Moore's motive in going to Cuba is to showcase the supposed superiority of the communist country's "free" national health care and to compare this to "the misery people are put through on a daily basis by our profit-based system" in the U.S.4 (The Department of Treasury has opened an investigation into whether Moore violated the U.S.'s longstanding embargo of Cuba.)5

As with Moore's previous documentaries, "Sicko" provides a brash handling of public policy disputes. The film's underlying push is to, in Moore's words, "ignite a fire for free, universal health care."6 When this premise is examined, the rosy myth of socialized medicine's achievement in Cuba is crushed.

Cuba's Heath Care System: The Reality

Under the Cuban government's health care monopoly, the state assumes complete control. Private, non-governmental health facilities, where ailing citizens could buy treatment, are illegal.7 As a result, average Cubans suffer long waits at government hospitals, while many services and technologies are available only to the Cuban party elite and foreign "health tourists" who pay with hard currency. Moreover, access to such rudimentary medicines as antibiotics and Aspirin can be limited, and there are reports that citizens excluded from the foreign-only hospitals often must bring their own bed sheets and blankets while in care.8

Despite the reality, Cuba's universal health system continues to be glorified. "Defenders of Cuba's communist government cite universal health care and education as 'gains of the revolution,' claiming the average Cuban is far better off today than under the dictatorship of Fulgencia Batista," wrote Tom Carter of the Washington Times.9 Moreover, "The health care system is often touted by many analysts as one of the Castro government's greatest achievements," says an updated 2002 State Department report, which rejects the notion that Cuba's health conditions have significantly improved for most Cuban citizens since 1958.10

When examining the woeful reality of health care in Cuba, Moore's and other liberals' drive to establish a 'socially equitable,' centrally-planned medical system in America should be rejected as a foolish proposal. Though state-sponsored health care is trumpeted in Cuba as a basic human right achieved by the revolution, according to many reports, including those by Cuban defectors, universal availability of and accessibility to top quality care are fantasies.

Below is a snapshot of reports from those who have witnessed Cuba's health care system up front. They serve notice of the horrors of socialized medicine.

https://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA557_Cuban_Health_Care.html
 
Robo said:
"Sicko" Presents False View of Cuba's Health System
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wow.gif



http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfri...export-its-healthcare-expertise/#3653ae0a325c​
 
Before the last election, Chavez said, “If I was from the United States, I’d vote for Obama.” And the two leaders do have some political and economic views in common. The fundamental difference is that it took Venezuela a lot less time to run out of “other people’s money” than America.
A few years ago, the left-wing site Salon was praising “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle” and suggesting that we should follow his example of nationalizing companies. “Are there any constructive lessons to be learned from Chavez’s grand experiment with more aggressive redistribution?” its author wondered.
Someone ought to ask the starving mobs redistributing government food while dodging bullets.
Venezuelan socialists used the familiar language of claiming that subsidies and free services were human rights. “Health care can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right,” Chavez once claimed. That should sound familiar. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have said the same thing.
But Venezuela’s universal health care has no actual medicine. Hospitals have no running water or soap. Victims arrive with gunshots and aren’t treated until they settle their bill. Babies die routinely.
And it goes without saying that there is no food.
VenezuelaCollapse2
“I doubt that anywhere in the world, except in Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one,” Maduro insists.
Considering how bad actual Cuban medicine is, he’s probably right.

http://rodmartin.org/left-ignores-collapse-venezuela/
 
Robo said:
Typical non-argument by a clueless leftist who's only talent is cut and paste cartoons. Another mindless progressive chump!:rofl2::mun::cof1:
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There was already a thread discussing this & you were posting in it so why start another one when you haven't even watched the damn movie yet??

I dunno about you Robo.... You wanna talk about movies you have not seen, the constitution of a country you don't live in.:dunno:
 
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Robo said:
"Sicko" Presents False View of Cuba's Health System
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Bill said:
There was already a thread discussing this & you were posting in it so why start another one when you haven't even watched the damn movie yet??

I dunno about you Robo.... You wanna talk about movies you have not seen, the constitution of a country you don't live in.:dunno:
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Bill said:
There was already a thread discussing this & you were posting in it so why start another one when you haven't even watched the damn movie yet??

I dunno about you Robo.... You wanna talk about movies you have not seen, the constitution of a country you don't live in.:dunno:
Click to expand...

And you know I haven't seen the movie because?:dunno::cof1:
 
Mr. Shaman said:
Yada, yada, yada
Click to expand...

"Sicko" Presents False View of Cuba's Health System

by Ryan Balis



Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore claims his latest documentary, "Sicko," will "rip the band-aid off America's health care industry,"1 which Moore sees as wrongfully dominated by private drug companies and profit-seeking HMOs.

In part of "Sicko," released June 29, Moore takes a group of ill 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for health treatment.2 Though most of the workers on Moore's two-week sojourn in March 2007 were insured,3 Moore's motive in going to Cuba is to showcase the supposed superiority of the communist country's "free" national health care and to compare this to "the misery people are put through on a daily basis by our profit-based system" in the U.S.4 (The Department of Treasury has opened an investigation into whether Moore violated the U.S.'s longstanding embargo of Cuba.)5

As with Moore's previous documentaries, "Sicko" provides a brash handling of public policy disputes. The film's underlying push is to, in Moore's words, "ignite a fire for free, universal health care."6 When this premise is examined, the rosy myth of socialized medicine's achievement in Cuba is crushed.

Cuba's Heath Care System: The Reality

Under the Cuban government's health care monopoly, the state assumes complete control. Private, non-governmental health facilities, where ailing citizens could buy treatment, are illegal.7 As a result, average Cubans suffer long waits at government hospitals, while many services and technologies are available only to the Cuban party elite and foreign "health tourists" who pay with hard currency. Moreover, access to such rudimentary medicines as antibiotics and Aspirin can be limited, and there are reports that citizens excluded from the foreign-only hospitals often must bring their own bed sheets and blankets while in care.8

Despite the reality, Cuba's universal health system continues to be glorified. "Defenders of Cuba's communist government cite universal health care and education as 'gains of the revolution,' claiming the average Cuban is far better off today than under the dictatorship of Fulgencia Batista," wrote Tom Carter of the Washington Times.9 Moreover, "The health care system is often touted by many analysts as one of the Castro government's greatest achievements," says an updated 2002 State Department report, which rejects the notion that Cuba's health conditions have significantly improved for most Cuban citizens since 1958.10

When examining the woeful reality of health care in Cuba, Moore's and other liberals' drive to establish a 'socially equitable,' centrally-planned medical system in America should be rejected as a foolish proposal. Though state-sponsored health care is trumpeted in Cuba as a basic human right achieved by the revolution, according to many reports, including those by Cuban defectors, universal availability of and accessibility to top quality care are fantasies.

Below is a snapshot of reports from those who have witnessed Cuba's health care system up front. They serve notice of the horrors of socialized medicine.

https://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA55...alth_Care.html
 
Chris Sabatini is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and director of Global Americans, a research institute focused on the foreign policy of human rights and social inclusion.

But while Cuba made great gains in primary and preventive care after the revolution, advanced health care is flagging. In the famously closed country, reliable statistics and rigorous studies are impossible to come by, but anecdotally, it appears that the health system used by average Cubans is in crisis. According to a report by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, hospitals “are generally poorly maintained and short of staff and medicines.” The writer visited facilities in Havana such as the Calixto García, 10 de Octubre and Miguel Enrique hospitals and describes them in an advanced state of neglect and deterioration. In the 10 de Octubre, “the floors are stained and surgeries and wards are not disinfected. Doors do not have locks and their frames are coming off. Some bathrooms have no toilets or sinks, and the water supply is erratic. Bat droppings, cockroaches, mosquitos [sic] and mice are all in evidence.”

One reason Cuba still sends doctors abroad despite findings like that: Its foreign medical program is a huge moneymaker, bringing approximately $2.5 billion per year to the cash-strapped government. With more than 50,000 Cuban health professionals working in 68 countries other than Cuba, the doctor export program has created a shortage of medical practitioners in Cuba.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...647fcce95e0_story.html?utm_term=.bae1400b3755
 
Robo said:
Below is a snapshot of reports from those who have witnessed Cuba's health care system up front.
Click to expand...

punishment-slap-smiley-emoticon.gif


"Got 'cher snapshots, right HERE, Goober!!"​


June 8, 2015 - "Over the past 50 years, Cuba consistently used the export of its doctors as a powerful and far-reaching tool of health diplomacy. The island nation has built good will and improved its global standing with emerging countries around the world during its years of isolation. It sent its first doctors overseas as far back as 1963, and to date has sent physicians to over 100 countries.

In my travels doing medical mission work to underserved regions in over a dozen African nations, the most common nonindigenous health personnel I run across are doctors and nurses from Cuba offering frontline primary and emergency care. They serve and cure, building trust in Cuba’s name globally.

Why is the medical expertise of this impoverished nation in demand? And why is it home to a population whose life expectancies rival those of much richer countries? Researchers have called this phenomenon the Cuban Health Paradox.

On two health-oriented trips to Cuba in the past year, what struck me was a systematically planned and organized primary care delivery system that captured the doctor-patient relationships of my father’s era of medical practice. Cuba treats healthcare as a human right, specifically stipulated in its constitution. Cuban nationals receive care for free, and have a neighborhood primary care physician who often knows them by name and sees them regularly."

Click to expand...


abbie_hoffman.jpg


RIGHT HERE, GOOBER!!!!!​
 
Mr. Shaman said:
:blah:
Click to expand...

Chris Sabatini is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and director of Global Americans, a research institute focused on the foreign policy of human rights and social inclusion.

But while Cuba made great gains in primary and preventive care after the revolution, advanced health care is flagging. In the famously closed country, reliable statistics and rigorous studies are impossible to come by, but anecdotally, it appears that the health system used by average Cubans is in crisis. According to a report by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, hospitals “are generally poorly maintained and short of staff and medicines.” The writer visited facilities in Havana such as the Calixto García, 10 de Octubre and Miguel Enrique hospitals and describes them in an advanced state of neglect and deterioration. In the 10 de Octubre, “the floors are stained and surgeries and wards are not disinfected. Doors do not have locks and their frames are coming off. Some bathrooms have no toilets or sinks, and the water supply is erratic. Bat droppings, cockroaches, mosquitos [sic] and mice are all in evidence.”

One reason Cuba still sends doctors abroad despite findings like that: Its foreign medical program is a huge moneymaker, bringing approximately $2.5 billion per year to the cash-strapped government. With more than 50,000 Cuban health professionals working in 68 countries other than Cuba, the doctor export program has created a shortage of medical practitioners in Cuba.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...647fcce95e0_story.html?utm_term=.bae1400b3755
 
Why do you continually spam the board?? You have pasted the same shit in multiple piles/threads........ Grow up!!!
 
Default NHS Socialized Medicine In Britain: Unmitigated Failure
EDITORIALS
NHS Socialized Medicine In Britain: Unmitigated Failure

7/17/2013
Health Care: A new report on Britain's National Health Service notes that as many as 13,000 needless deaths have occurred in 14 NHS hospital trusts since 2005. This is no fluke. It's the result of socialized medicine, done by experts.


Britain's much vaunted public medical system, accountable for 82% of all health care spending, according to the OECD, is in shambles.


A warning shot was fired a few months ago when one hospital, Mid-Staffordshire, was found to be a veritable death trap of neglect, misspent funds and starved investment. Now a new report on 14 NHS trusts, released by government-appointed Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh this week, finds that neglect and "needless" deaths are pretty much a characteristic of the entire system.


"We hear of A&E departments 'in meltdown', GP services 'on the verge of failure,' the Welsh HNHS being 'on its knees,'" wrote Simon Jenkins in the left-leaning Guardian. "The 111 non-emergency telephone service is reportedly useless. On one evening, Cornwall was said to have just one agency GP to cover the entire county. Last week's Cavendish report on frontline nursing told of wards left in the hands of untrained assistants for hours, indeed whole weekends," Jenkins wrote.

Get instant access to exclusive stock lists and powerful tools on Investors.com. Try us free for 4 weeks.

Then there was the "Liverpool Care Pathway" — an Orwellian death panel operation, where nurses shouted to visitors to not give their dying relatives sips of water for fear it would interfere with the hospital's death target. "No one was doing anything 'wrong' since everything was done by the book," wrote Jenkins.


Keogh found that as many as 13,000 "needless" deaths were the result, about 3 per day in each hospital district.


The U.K. has seen reform after reform of its health care system, but none has made much difference.


The problem is it's a socialized system. Unlike a private one — and in the OECD, only the U.S., Mexico and Chile have them — state priorities trump those of the consumer. That's why the NHS is celebrated as a patriotic duty — as it was during the absurd propaganda spectacle celebrating NHS at the 2012 London Olympics.


Big problems fester because the state can cover them up. Anyone criticizing the NHS is shouted down because bureaucracies resist change, Telegraph writer Daniel Hannan wrote.


So much for socialized medicine being a more "humane" form of health care. The Labour Party, which has touted and enshrined this socialism for decades, is now in crisis over the Keogh findings. Far from extending life, as private health care systems do, socialized health care is a reliable vehicle only for needless death. http://www.investors.com/politics/ed...gated-failure/
 
Socialized Medicine Elsewhere Shows Why It Is a Failure
January 22, 2008 International Health Systems Commentary

By Grace-Marie Turner

Britain’s system of socialized medicine is enough to make your teeth hurt – literally.

Its citizens rely upon the government-run National Health Service that is designed to provide free access to every medical service, including dental care. But like all socialized medicine schemes, it has produced long lines, a shortage of medical professionals, and shoddy care.

William Kelly, a resident of a working-class suburb of Manchester, represented the frustrations of many Britons when he plucked out one of his own teeth last year. Why? Because the pain had become intolerable, and the wait to see a dentist was unbearably long. When he spoke with The New York Times last summer, Kelly had been unable to get a dentist appointment for six years.

At the beginning of 2006, only 49 percent of British adults and 63 percent of children were registered with public dentists. Because dentists are paid on a per-patient basis, the government’s system encourages public dentists to treat as many patients as possible, often leading to inadequate care and roughshod work.

With pay tied directly to the number of patients a dentist sees, for example, it makes more sense — financially, at least — for a dentist to extract teeth rather than perform a more complex and time consuming root canal. And the pool of available dentists is shriking as more are leaving the National Health Service to work in the private sector where they can be paid more.

Last April, 2,000 dentists did just that, according to the British Dental Association. In understandable frustration, many Britons have resorted to “Do it Yourself Dentistry” kits sold in pharmacies.

Take the case of Gordon Cook, a 55-year-old security manager. After failing to find an NHS dentist, he resorted to fixing his front tooth with superglue, according to a November article in the Daily Mail. For three years, Cook constantly reapplied the glue to a loose crown before finally finding a dentist.

“You can't really taste it but you do have to be careful not to use too much, in case you glue your mouth shut,” said Cook.

But don’t expect advocates for socialized medicine to be honest about the major failings of the supposedly utopian English system.

Defenders of European-style healthcare will often observe that the United States spends a greater percentage of its GDP on healthcare than any other country in the world. And, with measures like life expectancy, America’s outcomes are often worse than those countries with socialized systems.

But these arguments fail to take into account the quality of care provided.

Because socialized medicine rejects the basic laws of supply and demand — and because state-administered systems do not pay doctors what the market determines they are worth — there is a serious discrepancy between the number of doctors and number of patients. This leads to the inevitable “waiting times” that one hears so much about in countries like Great Britain and Canada.

A report by the Canadian Fraser Institute found that the average wait time from referral by a general practitioner to a specialist is 18 weeks, the longest ever recorded in Canada.

Despite all the attempts made by the Canadian government to improve this problem, the average wait time actually rose by an astonishing 91% between 1993 and 2006. No matter how much money the Canadian government throws into the program, the problem does not go away. They just haven’t figured out how to repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Further, in the interest of national budgets, state-administered health systems have an incentive to put saving money before patients.

Japan, for example, spends only about half as much of its GDP on healthcare as the United States. But the comparatively low salaries doctors receive have caused a serious shortage of cancer specialists in a country where cancer rates are rising and the disease is the leading cause of death.

Indeed, “cancer refugees” — cancer patients desperately seeking care — have become a national crisis. At a recent event protesting the Japanese government’s lackadaisical approach to battling cancer, a cancer sufferer cried, “While Japan has become economically prosperous, cancer patients are in the same position as refugees who wander in search of food, water and someone who can help.” The patient died seven months later.

Those who advocate for universal healthcare may have their hearts in the right place, but they would do well to examine how the systems they support are actually performing around the world. So the next time you hear about the wonders of socialized medicine, remember Gordon Cook and his mouth full of superglue.

http://galen.org/topics/socialized-m...-is-a-failure/ A not-for-profit health and tax policy research organization
 
Socialized Medicine Elsewhere Shows Why It Is a Failure
January 22, 2008 International Health Systems Commentary

By Grace-Marie Turner

Britain’s system of socialized medicine is enough to make your teeth hurt – literally.

Its citizens rely upon the government-run National Health Service that is designed to provide free access to every medical service, including dental care. But like all socialized medicine schemes, it has produced long lines, a shortage of medical professionals, and shoddy care.

William Kelly, a resident of a working-class suburb of Manchester, represented the frustrations of many Britons when he plucked out one of his own teeth last year. Why? Because the pain had become intolerable, and the wait to see a dentist was unbearably long. When he spoke with The New York Times last summer, Kelly had been unable to get a dentist appointment for six years.

At the beginning of 2006, only 49 percent of British adults and 63 percent of children were registered with public dentists. Because dentists are paid on a per-patient basis, the government’s system encourages public dentists to treat as many patients as possible, often leading to inadequate care and roughshod work.

With pay tied directly to the number of patients a dentist sees, for example, it makes more sense — financially, at least — for a dentist to extract teeth rather than perform a more complex and time consuming root canal. And the pool of available dentists is shriking as more are leaving the National Health Service to work in the private sector where they can be paid more.

Last April, 2,000 dentists did just that, according to the British Dental Association. In understandable frustration, many Britons have resorted to “Do it Yourself Dentistry” kits sold in pharmacies.

Take the case of Gordon Cook, a 55-year-old security manager. After failing to find an NHS dentist, he resorted to fixing his front tooth with superglue, according to a November article in the Daily Mail. For three years, Cook constantly reapplied the glue to a loose crown before finally finding a dentist.

“You can't really taste it but you do have to be careful not to use too much, in case you glue your mouth shut,” said Cook.

But don’t expect advocates for socialized medicine to be honest about the major failings of the supposedly utopian English system.

Defenders of European-style healthcare will often observe that the United States spends a greater percentage of its GDP on healthcare than any other country in the world. And, with measures like life expectancy, America’s outcomes are often worse than those countries with socialized systems.

But these arguments fail to take into account the quality of care provided.

Because socialized medicine rejects the basic laws of supply and demand — and because state-administered systems do not pay doctors what the market determines they are worth — there is a serious discrepancy between the number of doctors and number of patients. This leads to the inevitable “waiting times” that one hears so much about in countries like Great Britain and Canada.

A report by the Canadian Fraser Institute found that the average wait time from referral by a general practitioner to a specialist is 18 weeks, the longest ever recorded in Canada.

Despite all the attempts made by the Canadian government to improve this problem, the average wait time actually rose by an astonishing 91% between 1993 and 2006. No matter how much money the Canadian government throws into the program, the problem does not go away. They just haven’t figured out how to repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Further, in the interest of national budgets, state-administered health systems have an incentive to put saving money before patients.

Japan, for example, spends only about half as much of its GDP on healthcare as the United States. But the comparatively low salaries doctors receive have caused a serious shortage of cancer specialists in a country where cancer rates are rising and the disease is the leading cause of death.

Indeed, “cancer refugees” — cancer patients desperately seeking care — have become a national crisis. At a recent event protesting the Japanese government’s lackadaisical approach to battling cancer, a cancer sufferer cried, “While Japan has become economically prosperous, cancer patients are in the same position as refugees who wander in search of food, water and someone who can help.” The patient died seven months later.

Those who advocate for universal healthcare may have their hearts in the right place, but they would do well to examine how the systems they support are actually performing around the world. So the next time you hear about the wonders of socialized medicine, remember Gordon Cook and his mouth full of superglue.

http://galen.org/topics/socialized-m...-is-a-failure/ A not-for-profit health and tax policy research organization
 
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