According to PBS, we have a medical paradise 90 miles south of Florida. No doubt we will witness hundreds of thousands of Americans on rafts heading for Cuba to be on the receiving end of this world-class health care.
In a grossly farcical report on Cuba’s medical system, PBS tells us that Cuba is awash in physicians, preventive medicine is a major priority and Cubans live longer than Americans.
Jim Hoft sets the record straight here on Cuba’s purported abundance of physicians. The number of doctors Cuba has is a number that constantly changes. Whatever the real number of physicians in Cuba, PBS cannot legitimately compare a Cuban physician to an American physician. PBS does not even address the topic of physician quality. The report instead focused on the number of physicians supposedly practicing in Cuba and highlighted the “free” education doctors receive.
In terms of life expectancy, we only know what the Cuban government chooses to report. Let’s say for arguments sake that Cubans do live longer on average than Americans. So what?
As David Hogberg notes, a whole host of factors determine life expectancy – many of which have nothing to do with the medical system:
Life expectancy is a poor statistic for determining the efficacy of a health care system because it fails the first criterion of assuming interaction with the health care system. For example, open any newspaper and, chances are, there are stories about people who die "in their sleep," in a car accident or of some medical ailment before an ambulance ever arrives. If an individual dies with no interaction with the health care system, then his death tells us little about the quality of a health care system. Yet all such deaths are computed into the life expectancy statistic.
Finally, PBS makes no mention of the fact that the Cuban government sets the terms of these “news reports.” PBS sees only what the Cuban government wants it to see. They interview only those people the Cuban government want interviewed.
Also – it’s worth pointing out that even Michael Moore is not availing himself of Cuba’s wonderful health care system. Moore recently checked into a luxury weight-loss spa in Miami.
What would Fidel say?
