And that aside, I wouldn't put too much credit on a photo-op. The Cuban propagandists aren't any dumber than American propagandists, and I'm sure that if you took a band of Cubans to the US for a film shoot about how awful the Cuban system is, someone in the US would come up with excellent care for them for a very modest sum.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
More significant was the article I quoted from. In terms of health-care for the whole population, Cuba is indeed a threatening "good example" for US "health" corporations. See also a WHO report:
"We fought for the Declaration of Alma-Ata before it was official," says Dr Cristina Luna, "and its message has guided and challenged us ever since." At 43, Luna is Cuba's national director of ambulatory care, and on her shoulders rests the country's entire primary health care system, by many standards one of the world's most effective and unique. Cuban health authorities give large credit for the country's impressive health indicators to the preventive, primary-care emphasis pursued for the last four decades. These indicators - which are close or equal to those in developed countries - speak for themselves. For example, in 2004, there were seven deaths for every 1000 children aged less than five years - a decrease from 46 such deaths 40 years earlier, according to WHO. Meanwhile Cubans have one of the world's highest life expectancies of 77 years. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/index.html
Cuban health authorities give large credit for the country's impressive health indicators to the preventive, primary-care emphasis pursued for the last four decades. These indicators - which are close or equal to those in developed countries - speak for themselves. For example, in 2004, there were seven deaths for every 1000 children aged less than five years - a decrease from 46 such deaths 40 years earlier, according to WHO. Meanwhile Cubans have one of the world's highest life expectancies of 77 years.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/index.html
Cf.Krgman on "socialized medicine":
The dissonance ... is one reason the Medicare drug legislation looks as if someone went down a checklist of things the veterans' system does right, and in each case did the opposite. For example, the V.H.A. avoids dealing with insurance companies; the drug bill shoehorns insurance companies into the program... The V.H.A. bargains effectively on drug prices; the drug bill forbids Medicare from doing the same. Still, ideology can't hold out against reality forever. Cries of "socialized medicine" didn't, in the end, succeed in blocking the creation of Medicare. And farsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration, not President Bush's unrealistic vision of a system in which people go "comparative shopping" for medical care the way they do when buying tile, represents the true future of American health care. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/01/paul_krugman_he.html
The dissonance ... is one reason the Medicare drug legislation looks as if someone went down a checklist of things the veterans' system does right, and in each case did the opposite. For example, the V.H.A. avoids dealing with insurance companies; the drug bill shoehorns insurance companies into the program... The V.H.A. bargains effectively on drug prices; the drug bill forbids Medicare from doing the same.
Still, ideology can't hold out against reality forever. Cries of "socialized medicine" didn't, in the end, succeed in blocking the creation of Medicare. And farsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration, not President Bush's unrealistic vision of a system in which people go "comparative shopping" for medical care the way they do when buying tile, represents the true future of American health care.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/01/paul_krugman_he.html
