Jack Hollis said:On Sun, 04 May 2008 12:39:46 GMT, John Forrest Tomlinson
Quoted message said:As I mentioned earlier, I've looked at critiques of the facts in his
films and the facts hold up.You're living in a fantasy world. MM's films are complete rubbish. Go
look at the cancer survival rates in the UK compared to the US if you
want to see how good health care is in the UK.The US has the best health care in the world.
Take a look at gun violence in the US and exactly who is doing all the
killing. It's not members of the NRA.
Some quotes here:
Cuban-born Dr. Jose Carro, who interviews Cuban doctors who have moved
to the United States, says Moore's movie lies. Dr. Darsi Ferrer, a
human-rights advocate in Cuba, told us that Americans should not
believe the claims being made. He describes the Cuban people as "crazy
with desperation" because of poor-quality care.
George Utset, who writes The Real Cuba Web site, says Moore and his
group were ushered to the upper floors of the hospital, to rooms
reserved for the privileged. "They don't go to the hospital for
regular Cubans. They go to hospital for the elite. And it's a very
different condition," Utset says.
For ordinary Cubans, health care is different. A YouTube.com video,
posted by a woman from Venezuela, purports to show the two forms of
health care, one for the privileged who pay in dollars and a far
inferior one for regular Cubans.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA557_Cuban_Health_Care.html
Says Canada's National Post, which assessed Cuba and its health system
in a three-part series:
Even the most commonly available pharmaceutical items in the U.S.,
such as Aspirin and rubbing alcohol, are conspicuously absent [in
Cuba]... Antibiotics... are in extremely short supply and available
only on the black market. Aspirin can be purchased only at government-
run dollar stores, which carry common medications at a huge markup in
U.S. dollars... This puts them out of reach of most Cubans, who are
paid little and in pesos.11
The same National Post story continues, quoting Jasmin, a nurse from
Moron, Cuba, "We have nothing. I haven't seen aspirin in a Cuban
store here for more than a year. If you have any pills in your purse,
I'll take them. Even if they have passed their expiry date."12
Cuban defector Dr. Leonel Cordova told the New York Times about his
experience practicing in Cuba, "[E]ven if I diagnosed something simple
like bronchitis... I couldn't write a prescription for antibiotics
because there were none."13
Along these lines, Patricia Grogg of the Inter Press Service writes:
[A] survey carried out in pharmacies late last year [in 2000] by the
local [Cuban] magazine Bohemia failed to find 211 of the medicines
included on the official list of products produced to attend to the
health of this Caribbean island nation's population of 11 million...
'They say scarcity of medicine is no longer such a serious problem,
but I've been trying for days to buy aspirin in this pharmacy, and
they always tell me there isn't any,' complained Mara Dolores Pea, a
60-year-old pensioner, outside her neighborhood pharmacy.14
In addition to a limited supply of medicine, according to a 2005
report in the Boston Globe, Cuban health care workers are in short
supply:
A 45-year-old nurse in Camaguey Province said she has worked without a
doctor in her primary-care clinic for more than two years since the
physician was transferred to another clinic to replace a doctor sent
to Venezuela. 'My patients complain every day. They want me to act
as a doctor, but I can't,' she said. 'The level of attention isn't
the same as before.'15
The nurse is alluding to a program in which one-fifth of Cuba's health
care labor supply - some 14,000 doctors and 6,000 health workers - has
been contracted out to work in Venezuela. Under a special "oil-for-
doctors" exchange between Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel
Castro, Venezuelans receive free eye surgery in Cuba. In return for
these medical services, Cuba receives 90,000 barrels of discounted oil
per day.16
Ordinary Cubans have suffered as a result. "Blackouts, shortages of
consumer goods and other problems persist," wrote Gary Marx of the
Chicago Tribune.17
Show me anything as advanced, comprehensive, and skilled as the Mayo
Clinic, or Mass. General in Cuba.
Again they provide some level of services for everyone. We don't.
That's where we fail. Those covered have MUCH better care here.
We need to fix those not covered.
Bill C