“The countries like Cuba or Canada or Russia or a lot of places in this world spend half what we spend per capita and they got better health outcomes than we do,” (deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee Rep. Keith Ellison, July 24th)
But why pick on Rep. Ellison? Adulation for the putrid disaster known as Castroite “healthcare” seems indigenous to Democrat Party DNA. To wit:
“Castro brought superb systems of healthcare and education to his people.” (Jimmy Carter, 2002.)
“The United States recognizes the progress that (Castro’s) Cuba has made as a nation, its enormous achievements in education and in health care.” (Pres. Barack Obama March, 2016.)
Now over to the Democrat Party’s public relations subsidiaries:
“One of Cuba's greatest prides is its health care system. (PBS’ Ray Suarez reporting from Havana.)
“Cuba could serve as 'a model for health care reform in the United States' ” (CNN’s Morgan Neil.)
‘Castro has brought great healthcare to his country.” (ABC’s Barbara Walters)
Now regarding what Pres. Obama called Cuba’s “progress,” Websters defines the word “progress” as: “gradual betterment; especially: the progressive development of humankind.”
So let’s see: in 1958 (the year prior to Castro’s revolution) robustly capitalist Cuba had the 13th lowest infant-mortality rate in the world. This put her not only at the top in Latin America but atop most of Western Europe, ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Today all of these countries leave Communist Cuba in the dust, with much lower infant mortality rates.
And even plummeting from 13th (capitalist) to 43th (communist Cuba’s ranking today) Cuba's "impressive" infant mortality rate is kept artificially low by Communist chicanery with statistics and by a truly appalling abortion rate of 0.71 abortions per live birth. This is the hemisphere's highest, by far. Any Cuban pregnancy that even hints at trouble gets "terminated."
A few years ago, Dr. Juan Felipe García, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard, he reported the following:
"The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job."
This might lead a few people to question Cuba's official infant-mortality figures. But such people would not get a Havana bureau for their news agency, much less a visa to film a documentary (Michael Moore, Sicko.)
According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of “doctors” with Cuban “medical degrees” flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates’ exam for certification as “physician assistants,” making them barely fit even as nurses.
Please, amigos! None of this is meant to disparage these hapless Cuban men and women who were simply cursed by fate to be born under a Stalinist tyranny. And please perish any idea that I’m disparaging U.S. nurses! In fact, I’ve been served by many nurses who –in expertise and diligence—shamed the bona-fide M.D. they worked for!....But hopefully you get my point.
In fact, ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with hospitals like the one Michael Moore featured in Sicko and CNN's features in its “reports,” than Moore has with a Soloflex or Nordic Track. Most Cubans view these hospitals the way most college boys view Girls Gone Wild videos and husbands view Victoria's Secret Catalogues: "Wow! If only…?!”
Two generations ago, as mentioned above, Cuban doctors were among the most respected on earth—and not by political hacks, pompous frauds and communist agents (i.e. mainstream media) as are Cuban doctors today.
Surely the statement above branding as “Communist agents” the respected health professionals eagerly beckoned and reverentially quoted by the U.S. media strikes many readers as unnecessarily “hyperbolic”-- if not downright “Mc Carthyite,” right?
“Have you no sense of decency, Mr Fontova? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Objection sustained. So let’s have a closer look at this issue: The U.S. media’s veritable “go-to-person” on Cuban healthcare (besides Michael Moore) is Gail Reed. CNN, a major media fan of Gail Reed’s “impartial expertise”, calls her “a Medical Expert.”
Now over at MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell whose eagerly-issued “journalist’ visa by the Communist regime makes it easy for her to often “interview” Gail Reed on location in Havana for NBC cameras, describes her as: “international director of the nonprofit group Medical Education Cooperation.”
During the 1990s Reed also functioned as executive producer for NBC News Havana bureau--a pretty plum position for a communist intelligence apparatchik, no? Not that NBC revealed Gail Reed’s genuine “credentials.”
Because you see, amigos: for the past 36 years Havana resident Gail Reed has been married to an officer of Cuba’s Directorio General de Intelligencia (spy service) named Julian Torres Rizo. This KGB-trained apparatchik recruited Reed back in 1969 when she visited Cuba as a member of the (DGI-created) Venceremos Brigades of “starry-eyed” U.S. college kids. Obama’s future “neighbors” Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, by the way, served as recruiters for these Venceremos Brigades. This was an important function as leaders of the terrorist group Weather Underground.
“Your society must be destroyed!” the KGB-trained Rizo coached his eager hippie recruits in Cuba. “It is now your duty to help destroy your society!” Reed was so enchanted with Stalinist, terror-sponsoring Cuba that she moved there and became a top writer for Cuba’s Communist party press.
Not that any American viewers imbibing her reports on the marvels of Cuba’s healthcare and the wickedness of the U.S. “Blockade” of her adopted country in those “mainstream” media organs might have guessed any of Gail Reed’s background. For such illuminating (to most of us) and infuriating (to the Castro regime and its multitude of U.S.-based agents) disclosures it greatly helps to go here.
As luck would have it, the farce of Cuba’s “healthcare” as spread by Democrats and their Fake News media auxiliaries was the topic of a rollicking presentation at a Young America's Foundation conference just last week.