Crookshanks said:
Here's my two cents.
My family is from cuba, and truthfully I don't know ANYTHING about their health care system EXCEPT that the poor get great preventive/primary care. According to my grandmother, doctors are assigned a few blocks and they each have to visit their blocks on a weekly basis. This is a benefit to the elderly people who live alone, especially. If you're poor it doesn't matter because you still can go see a doctor whenever you need to without worrying about finances, like it is here in the states, where my dad hasn't seen a doctor in ages because he's poor and unemployed. As a result his problems have gotten worse.
The overall impression that I get is that cubans who come here are much more impressed with THEIR healthcare back at home than they are with the crap they get here-if they get any-because often they're poor and can't afford it. If you're rich YES you will get great healthcare in this country, but not if you are poor...
ALSO, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Cuba ranked above the USA by the World Health Organization, in regards to healthcare? I think that says something.
There is not one citizen or legal immigrant in the United States that can claim they can't get access to health care. Granted, the volume of uninsured patients in ER's around the country is taxing the system, but treatment is given just the same. There are so many programs available to assist with health care and preventative medicine it is almost staggering. And yet I hear this argument, this very tired and sad class envy argument, that healthcare in the US is only for the rich.
If your father is in need of medical treatment, I encourage you to help him enroll in medicare or medicaid, or both if he qualifies. You can find further information here
www.cms.hhs.gov/home/medicaid.asp
As for the World Health Organization ranking the USA below Cuba in terms of healthcare, perhaps you should look at the criteria that they use. The following comes from a World Health Organization press release in June of 2000:
"WHOs assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health systems financial burden within the population (who pays the costs)."
In this article the US health care system, according to the criteria chosen, actually ranked 37th out of 191 countries. HOWEVER, when it comes to health system responsiveness, the US is ranked #1. It is the distribution of the health system's financial burden that changes the index rating for the US so dramatically. Because there is such a large spread between the lowest income earners and the highest, the United States scores poorly. However, when you compare the lowest income bracket population in the US and the percentage of income spent on healthcare, it is dramatically lower than the lowest income bracket of almost every other country. And for countries of comparable population size, the United States has the lowest percentage.
So yes, ranking Cuba above the US does say something. It says that class envy can so distort your perception that good becomes bad and bad becomes good. You should also note that amoung industrialized nations, the WHO ranks the United States as the stingiest donator of medical and humanitarian aid in the world, based upon percentage of GDP. Ironically, in 2004 the United States donated more than twice the amount of international aid donated by all other nations combined. I find that very telling.
Before anyone flames me for this post, ask yourself the following:
If the US health care system is so bad, why are Cubans risking their lives to come over here when they could just stay in the medical paradise of Cuba?