The Myth of Cuban Health CareHow did something so at odds with reality persist for so long? And why is it finally crumbling?
DANIEL RAISBECK AND JOHN OSTERHOUDT
4.18.2022
"If there's one thing they do right in Cuba, it's health care," said Michael Moore in a 2007 interview. "Cuba has the best health care system in the entire area," according to Angela Davis, "and in many respects much better than the U.S."
"One thing that is well established in the global health community is the strength of the Cuban national health system," said Clare Wenham, a professor at the London School of Economics.
Claims like these have appeared in hundreds of documentaries, newspaper articles, and magazine features over the years celebrating the supposed marvel of Cuba's health care system. It's a testament to the effectiveness of the Castro regime's propaganda apparatus that this myth, so deeply at odds with reality, has persisted for so long.
"The Cuban health care system is destroyed," Rotceh Rios Molina, a Cuban doctor who escaped the country's medical mission while stationed in Mexico, tells Reason in Spanish. "The doctor's offices are in very bad shape."
"People are dying in the hallways," says José Angel Sánchez, another Cuban doctor who defected from the medical mission in Venezuela, interviewed by Reason in Spanish.
According to Rios, Sánchez, and others with firsthand experience practicing medicine in Cuba, the island nation's health care system is a catastrophe. Clinics lack the most routine supplies, from antibiotics to oxygen and even running water, and their hallways are often occupied by ailing patients because there aren't enough doctors to treat their most basic needs. Cuban hospitals are unsanitary and decrepit. It's exactly what you'd expect in a country impoverished by communism.
The only thing that's changed is that because of social media and the COVID-19 pandemic, the government's propaganda facade has finally started to shatter.
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Source:
https://reason.com/video/2022/04/18/the-myth-of-cuban-health-care/
