I don’t know what is worse … The Cuban healthcare system, or the detached leftist/liberals living in a comfort zone far, far away from it, but bowing adoringly to if from their safe distance for “the cause”. Once again it’s those who do not live directly under the Cuban medical system (that the general population of Cuba MUST live under) singing the praises of the Castro regime’s disgusting medical malpractice, and trying to sell it to the American people as a wonderful model for nationalized healthcare. BTW, our tax dollars helped pay for this steaming piece of socialist/communist propaganda:
As to that PBS footnote regarding “Cuba’s choice exports being doctors” … There goes the left again, “redefining” stuff.
Oh, and that pro-Cuban healthcare American, Gail A. Reed of MEDICC Review … Uh huh. (It’s amazing what pops up when you type something into the search engine and add ‘communist’ after it.)
Mary Anastasia O’Grady from the Wall Street Journal begs to differ with the pie-in-the-sky commie-loving PBS:
A Cuban Fairy Tale From PBS
In his memoir covering four years in Cuba as a correspondent for Spanish Television, Vicente Botín tells about a Havana woman who was frustrated by the doctor shortage in the country. She hung a sheet on her balcony with the words “trade me to Venezuela.” When the police arrived she told them: “Look, compañeros, I’m as revolutionary as the next guy, but if you want to see a Cuban doctor, you have to go to Venezuela.”
That story was not in the three-part report by Ray Suarez on Cuban health care that aired on PBS’s “NewsHour” last week. Nor was the one about the Cuban whose notice of his glaucoma operation arrived in 2005, three years after he died and five years after he had requested it. Nor was there any coverage of the town Mr. Botín writes about close to the city of Holguín, that in 2006 had one doctor serving five clinics treating 600 families. In fact, it was hard to recognize the country that Mr. Suarez claimed to be describing.
The series was taped in Cuba with government “cooperation” so there is no surprise that it went heavy on the party line. Still, there was something disturbing about how Mr. Suarez allowed himself to be used by the police state, dutifully reciting its dubious claims as if he were reporting great advances in medical science.
Castro’s military dictatorship marks 52 years in power next week. But the “revolution” is dead. A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on Internet blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 29, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch. What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of “freedom,” “down with Fidel” and “down with socialism,” according to press reports.
Dissent is spreading in Cuba like dengue fever because daily life is so onerous. One of the best documented sources on this subject is the Botín narrative (“Los Funerales de Castro,” 2009, available in Spanish only), which pulls back the curtain on “the Potemkin village” that foreigners see on official visits to Cuba. Behind the façade is desperate want. Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. Even housing is in short supply, with multiple families wedged into single-family homes. The government tries to keep the lid on through repression. But in private there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro.
Mr. Suarez’s report, by contrast, is like a state propaganda film. […]
Read the whole thing …
H/T and More @ Gateway Pundit.
Edit note: I said above to ‘read the whole thing’ with a link to the WSJ, but it’s the pay-side of the site. Gateway Pundit has grabbed what appears to be the Mary Anastasia O’Grady article in full so you can finish it on his site link.
Comments are closed.