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Originally Posted by chankya
I remember you bringing up a similar argument about Vietnam in this or another thread. My experience has been that people who leave a country always tend to have reservations about it. My aunt who is a naturalized US citizen for instance refuses to believe that India has a better communications infrastructure than the US. No amount of trips to India and evidence to the contrary will convince her otherwise.(I only bring up communications because I'm a commn. Enggr.) I've seen a lot of people of different nationalities like that. People who need a reason to convince themselves that they're better off now than they were before. They don't really realize that they are doing it either. So you'll forgive me if I don't consider that a valid argument.
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Well, one of them is a self-proclaimed socialist (much to the dismay of his parents) and none of the ones that I know actually left Cuba... they've been born and raised here in the states. I wouldn't consider their thinking to be biased in that respect... in fact I think it is some of the least biased opinion I can find, since they don't have anything to prove to me (and they get to see what things are like for Cubans, not for visitors to Cuba).
And so who provides reliable information on this if people who haven't seen it first hand can't? Outsiders getting tours of Cuba only get shown the best facilities. The Cuban government is naturally going to say "life is great!" After that what do we have to go on, except the number of people (Cubans even) who have, and continue, to come to the United States and the information given to us by Cubans who go back to visit?
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Okay, "Unfair" was a poor choice. Let me put it this way. The original reply was to a point Shek made about access to cutting edge stuff. Developing nations have a far more limited pool of money to spend. So if $100 will help keep a hundred people healthy but this brand new kick-ass killer drug that costs another $100 will keep an additional individual healthy then you can understand why that addnl. $100 will likely be spent on something else. In fact it's true of America too. The question is about the level at which the cost outweighs the benefit. If at 1/30th the cost they can provide care for 100 as opposed to the 105 that would have been treated in the US, I'd say the citizens are doing okay.
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This argument ignores the quality of health care, and merely focuses on the numbers (something Communism is fantastic at). I for one, would much rather seek treatment with an American doctor with American facilities than a Cuban one. Health care may be more universal in Cuba (I honestly don't know... that would require two very different systems to be compared, because anyone can seek emergency medical treatment at a hospital here in the states), but it is very far below American standards.
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I don't know what this has to do with capitalism. My friend in Canada complains of long waiting lists for visits to the doctor. She nipped across the border to see a doctor instead. I'd say her access the medicine is pretty stunted.
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So Canada has stunted access to health care and she went to the United States to get it faster? I would argue that this is an argument in favor of the US and private health care more than anything else.
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I don't really know how it compares with Cuba. Either way my point is that it would be a better metric of easy access to health care.
My point all along has never been that I think Cuba has great healthcare. Fact is I don't know what their system is like. What I'm pointing out is that amount of money spent in raw terms is a bad statistic(when used as a measure of access to health care) especially for the US.
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Only in some respects. It would be a good metric of determining easy access to
basic healthcare, but say you have a problem that your family doctor can't do anything about or even diagnose. You are going to want to be able to get a specialist of some kind to help... which is why basic healthcare only goes so far.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of problems with our system... however the constant comparisons between the US and Cuba that are made by so many lefties and socialists are completely rediculous.