Les Jones: Tonight's 20/20: Inside Cuba's Healthcare System

September 07, 2007

Health Care > Tonight's 20/20: Inside Cuba's Healthcare System

ABC 20/20 will have a segment this Friday about healthcare that regular Cubans receive. It will be a "Give me a break" segment hosted by John Stossel.
It probably will be the last segment on that particular show.

20/20 airs at 10 PM EST and it lasts one hour.

George of The Real Cuba was interviewed as part of this program.

You will be able to see for the first time EVER on U.S. television, photos and videos taken inside Cuban hospitals, WITHOUT GOVERNMENT PERMISSION.

Should be interesting. I'm always amazed at the people who are willing to swallow Cuba's official government healthcare statistics hook, line, and sinker. Cuba is run by a Communist dictatorship that imprisons reporters and librarians. They control the people to the extent that they hand everyone their food ration every month. There's no reason on Earth to give any credence whatsoever to Cuba's government statistics.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

Thanks...I'll try to catch that!

Posted by: Mushy at September 07, 2007

So I watched 20/20. The segment on Cuba was short, but effective. Next week John Stossel counters Michael Moore's Sicko.

Takeaway points:

Moore went to a special wing of a hospital for party members and other elites, but refuses to acknowledge it. Ordinary Cubans have much worse healthcare than what he showed in Sicko.
Cuba's supposed advantage in infant mortality is a difference in reporting, plus outright lying and misreporting. The U.S. tries to save more premies, and counts premie fatalities as infant mortalities, whereas Cuba never counts them as having lived.
More at Wikipedia. Cuban doctors receive starvation wages and have to have a second job to make a living. Commodities like aspirin, antibiotics, and sutures are hard to come by and often have to be bought on the black market.
Something Stossel didn't mention - Castro nearly died recently, reportedly from a botched operation by a Cuban doctor. A Spanish doctor had to be flown in to save his bacon. If your Fearless Leader has to be saved by a foreign doctor, maybe your health system isn't so hot.

Posted by: Les Jones at September 07, 2007