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August 12, 2009
IBD: CNN to present Cuba's socialized health care system as "a model for health care reform in the United States"
Topics: Political News and commentariesAs an Investors Business Daily points out, if you ever wonder why we so resist socialism, consider the latest news out of that collectivist island paradise known as Cuba, where central planners announced this week that they were fresh out of money to buy toilet paper for the island's 9 million citizens, and have decreed that oxen would replace tractors in the fields, a bid to conserve fuel because Cuba is out of gas. Yet, even as these examples of Cuban progress roll in, CNN ignores the facts and has decided to present Cuba's socialized health care system as "a model for health care reform in the United States":
[...] "How does Cuba do it?" gushed the CNN anchor. "First of all, the government dictates salaries. Doctors earn less than $30 per month -- very little compared to doctors elsewhere. And priority is given to avoiding expensive procedures, says Gail Reed (a contributor to the Cuban communist party propaganda organ Granma), who's lived and worked in Cuba for decades."Read it all here.But instead of pluses, these features are at the root of why the Cuban system is not a model. Government-dictated salaries -- like Medicare payments here -- reduce incentives for doctors to provide quality care. And when cheap procedures are a priority -- as they are, say, in the U.K. -- teeth get pulled instead of filled. But the basic problem with socialism is that there's literally nothing there.
CNN gives little attention to the fact that hospitals in Cuba have no Band-Aids and are short on aspirin and actual medicine. Photos from TheRealCuba.com show hospitals strewn with filthy mattresses, infested with cockroaches and full of bony patients nursing ugly bedsores. The only plenty within Cuba's universal coverage system is one of want.
I find it hard to believe that even CNN could be so clueless as to try to use Cuba's medical system to push its leftist, liberal, agenda in support of Obamacare.
Hat tip - Kevin D. Williamson
Posted by Abdul at August 12, 2009 12:20 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
- IBD: CNN to present Cuba's socialized health care system as "a model for health care reform in the United States" - Aug 12, 2009
