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Exporting Doctors

"The Cuban health care system is destroyed," Rotceh Rios Molina, a Cuban doctor who escaped the country's medical mission while stationed in Mexico, tells Reason in Spanish. "The doctor's offices are in very bad shape."

"People are dying in the hallways," says José Angel Sánchez, another Cuban doctor who defected from the medical mission in Venezuela, tells Reason in Spanish.

According to Rios, Sánchez, and others with firsthand experience practicing medicine in Cuba, the island nation's health care system is a catastrophe. It's exactly what you'd expect in a country impoverished by communism.

In the 15 years since the release of Michael Moore's 'Sicko,' which celebrated Cuban health care, everyday citizens have been armed with smartphones and social media, empowering them to tell the truth about what it's really like in Cuban hospitals.
So how did the Castro regime's propaganda machine manage to fool so many for so long? According to Maria Werlau, executive director of the Cuba Archive, the answer lies with Cuba's foreign medical missions, which are teams of health care professionals dispatched to provide emergency and routine care to foreign countries.
 
Michael Moore was blatantly lied to by the Castro government when he went to the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana and requested the same healthcare a common Cuban gets, "no more no less". He was taken to a floor for foreigners that pay in hard currency and communist party bosses only and where ordinary Cubans are not allowed under the Castroist apartheid system.

Medi wrote: You deserve a note of recognition, Sandokan, for sticking to this project (this thread) for close to 9 years.
 
Medi wrote: You deserve a note of recognition, Sandokan, for sticking to this project (this thread) for close to 9 years.

Thanks for your note of recognition, it makes my day to here that. According to the well-orchestrated propaganda of the Castroist regime that “Cuba has the best health care system in the world”, and even President Obama and General Colin Powell publicly repeated the myth. I try my best to debunk that.
 
Another indicator that Cuba couldn't have a good healthcare system is their former enabler the Soviet Union was clearly well behind the US, UK and other western nations in the area of health care. Many doctors from the Soviet Union who immigrated to the US had great difficulty meeting the minimal standards to be a practicing M.D. in the US. Since it is very likely the "great" Cuban health care system, is modeled on the former Soviet Union's medical education system, I doubt the doctors in Cuban receive good training.
 
"The Cuban health care system is destroyed," Rotceh Rios Molina, a Cuban doctor who escaped the country's medical mission while stationed in Mexico, tells Reason in Spanish. "The doctor's offices are in very bad shape."

"People are dying in the hallways," says José Angel Sánchez, another Cuban doctor who defected from the medical mission in Venezuela, tells Reason in Spanish.

According to Rios, Sánchez, and others with firsthand experience practicing medicine in Cuba, the island nation's health care system is a catastrophe. It's exactly what you'd expect in a country impoverished by communism.

In the 15 years since the release of Michael Moore's 'Sicko,' which celebrated Cuban health care, everyday citizens have been armed with smartphones and social media, empowering them to tell the truth about what it's really like in Cuban hospitals.
So how did the Castro regime's propaganda machine manage to fool so many for so long? According to Maria Werlau, executive director of the Cuba Archive, the answer lies with Cuba's foreign medical missions, which are teams of health care professionals dispatched to provide emergency and routine care to foreign countries.
 
So how did the Castro regime's propaganda machine manage to fool so many for so long? According to Maria Werlau, executive director of the Cuba Archive, the answer lies with Cuba's foreign medical missions, which are teams of health care professionals dispatched to provide emergency and routine care to foreign countries.
This past weekend my immediate family traveled to my hometown to visit my parents and first cousins and their children who were staying with my parents. My cousin and his wife immigrated to the US from Cuba in the early 2000’s. They are young and healthy and have their own stories.

The relevant part of their visit was photos of an aunt in intensive care in a Cuban hospital near Santiago. The room is bare. There is no plumbing. The window, long broken has not been fixed. The toilet in the room is the collapsible, portable type with a bag underneath it to hold human waste. She is lying on what appears to be a hospital bed. Corrugate boxes weighted by the humidity serve as the room’s only furniture. Her son who lives in Chile has been there months serving as her nurse and advocating for he care.

Just terrible conditions.
 
Rios participated in the medical mission in Sierra Leone in 2013, where health care specialists from around the world came to help contain the Ebola epidemic. The members of the mission were told that when they returned to Cuba, they would be received as heroes. Rios says that, while he did receive a stipend that went to cover his living expenses, medical personnel from other countries were generously compensated.
 
One of the most readily apparent problems with the health care system in Castrolandia is the severe shortage of medicines, equipment, and other supplies. Even the most common pharmaceutical items, such as aspirin and antibiotics are conspicuously absent or only available on the black market, and patients need to provide bed sheets and food during hospital stays.

This problem is by no means limited to the health sector. Cubans often have tremendous difficulty obtaining basic consumer goods and other necessities, including food.

A number of key sectors of the economy, such as health care, remain governed by centralized planning, which inevitably leads to chronic material shortages and inefficiency. In a centralized economy, forces of supply and demand are inevitably out of balance, leading to underproduction of goods.


So nothing to do with the 60 year ongoing blockade of Cuba by the USA?

Maybe they should be allowed to live like other third worlders? you know with no housing or free education, or healthcare system?

You made it out to a country where the bottom rung of society are left without healthcare aside from charity workers. You should be glad but your posts say you remain bitter.
 
So nothing to do with the 60 year ongoing blockade of Cuba by the USA?

Maybe they should be allowed to live like other third worlders? you know with no housing or free education, or healthcare system?

You made it out to a country where the bottom rung of society are left without healthcare aside from charity workers. You should be glad but your posts say you remain bitter.
See post 1.
 
So nothing to do with the 60 year ongoing blockade of Cuba by the USA?

Maybe they should be allowed to live like other third worlders? you know with no housing or free education, or healthcare system?

You made it out to a country where the bottom rung of society are left without healthcare aside from charity workers. You should be glad but your posts say you remain bitter.

The United States is not the Cuban people’s primary problem. As with most countries, the problems are self-induced.

If there is anything that has been learned over the past 35 years is the best way to improve the quality of life of poor citizens of the world is to allow them access to free market economies.
 
The United States is not the Cuban people’s primary problem. As with most countries, the problems are self-induced.

If there is anything that has been learned over the past 35 years is the best way to improve the quality of life of poor citizens of the world is to allow them access to free market economies.

I think that's hogwash to be honest. You can't ignore the calamitous effect of 60 odd years of savage US led international sanctioning.

If you want to see a comparison worthy of the time, you should be comparing Cuba to the likes of Haiti or sub Saharan Africa. Most of the third world has " access to free market economies" and you can see just how worse off they are for it just by referencing the usual societal indicators such as literacy, child mortality, life span, homelessness etc etc When you think they haven't been subjected to the 60 odd year economic terrorism that Cuba has, your claims are nonsense.
 
I think that's hogwash to be honest. You can't ignore the calamitous effect of 60 odd years of savage US led international sanctioning.

If you want to see a comparison worthy of the time, you should be comparing Cuba to the likes of Haiti or sub Saharan Africa. Most of the third world has " access to free market economies" and you can see just how worse off they are for it just by referencing the usual societal indicators such as literacy, child mortality, life span, homelessness etc etc When you think they haven't been subjected to the 60 odd year economic terrorism that Cuba has, your claims are nonsense.
Just like Cuba, Haiti has been economically mismanaged for a long time—except Haiti has been mismanaged longer. It has a 200 year history of inept leadership, corruption, violence, and squandering its resources. You want the proper contrast to Haiti, venture to the other side of the island. Two shitty, undemocratic government led by a cadre of terrible, unscrupulous leaders. Why is the Dominican Republic so much better off than Haiti? Let’s look at two of each country’s most influential more recent leaders; Duvalier and Trujillo. Duvalier (who had early communist affinities) spent his time amassing and protecting political power and completely ignored the economy while making no effort to enforce free market institutions. On the other hand, Trujillo was a greedy bastard and ran the country like his own business and protected his countries assets. The result is that today, citizens of the DR are seven times richer than their fellow Hispaniola residents.



Don’t believe the propaganda about Cuba.

Let’s look at Cuba pre revolution. Cuba had the highest literacy rate in Latin America. It had a burgeoning middle class. It had one of the highest college educated populaces in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba had a higher percentage of college educated woman than the United States. What it also had was an increasingly educated populace that yearned for democracy and was the force that initially opposed Batista’s regime and ultimately suffered through his regime’s purging of student dissidents. It was a revolution of the elite overthrowing a populist (and POC) dictator. And it could very well be the reason intellectuals has such an affinity for the revolution. Whether it was Castro’s intention of being a socialist from the beginning or he later evolved and ultimately embraced it, is a matter of much debate. But none the less he went about consolidating economic power and tearing down free market mechanisms and institutions. The result was a long spiral of economic disaster periodically mitigated by playing military proxy for the Soviet Union.

But Castro started replacing free market mechanisms with central planning control long before the US embargo was in place.
 
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In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch said the Cuban medical missions "violate [doctors'] fundamental rights," including "the right to privacy, freedom of expression and association, liberty, and movement, among others." It noted that "many doctors feel pressured to participate in the missions and fear retaliation if they do not..."

After the mission in Sierra Leone, Rios was redeployed to a military base in Mexico. One day, he was sent with a group of doctors to buy some phone cards so they could connect with their relatives back home. He decided to make his escape. Rios found a job at a Mexican pharmacy and started saving money to pay a coyote to bring him into the U.S. He was picked up by border officials, and taken to an immigrant detention center for 42 days. After his release, he could join his family in Miami.

The medical missions are primarily a way of selling Cuban health care services abroad. So what's health care like for those living on the island?
I can believe any trustworthy news organization would take seriously any data provided by Cuban dictatorship. Medical care in Cuba can be good...if you are a foreigner/tourist and pay with hard currency, otherwise is pathetic.
 
Julio Cesar Alfonso is the president of the Miami-based Solidarity Without Borders, which helps Cuban doctors who have escaped. He says that there are two health care systems in Cuba—one that is used by the majority of regular citizens, and another that is reserved for tourists and the Cuban elite.

Sánchez thinks that, as the Castros' health care myth crumbles, ordinary Cubans are beginning to realize that they are not threatened by foreign enemies, as the regime propaganda machine has claimed for decades.

"The only enemy of the Cuban people," he says, "is the Cuban government."

Written and hosted by Daniel Raisbeck and Jim Epstein; narrated by Daniel Raisbeck; edited by John Osterhoudt; camera by Epstein, Osterhoudt, Isaac Reese, and Meredith Bragg; graphic design by Nathalie Walker; animations by Reese and Osterhoudt; additional editing support by Regan Taylor; ; additional research by Alexandra De Caires; translation assistance by María Jose Inojosa Salina; English subtitles by Caitlin Peters.
Of course, there are two separate healthcare system, one for the tourist and one for the citizens. It is not possible to have doctors who choose to drive cabs to survive while still claiming the country has the best Healthcare system.
 
Rubio, Menendez Raise Alarm on Cuba's Continued International Medical "Missions"

MAR 17 2023

Since the 1960s, the criminal Cuban regime has deployed hundreds of thousands of Cuban doctors across the globe. These international “missions” are really a modern-day human trafficking scheme. Yet, this year, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia have indicated they will restart programs that employ them.

Dear Secretary Blinken:

We write to request you renew and strengthen your diplomatic efforts to raise awareness of Cuba’s attempts to promote human trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, we ask that you urge governments in the region to end their use of Cuban medical personnel in their national healthcare programs.

The U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) and annual Human Rights Report finds that Cuba’s international medical missions are a form of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. According to the Department’s 2022 reporting, Cuba’s Unidad Central de Cooperación Médica, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment manage a system whereby Cuban doctors and medical personnel are forced to work overseas under opaque contracts. Not only does the Cuban regime confiscate the passports, professional credentials, and salaries of the victims of these programs, they also threaten these professionals and their families should they attempt to leave.
Click link above for full article.
The Castroist regime deployment of Cuban doctors under the banner of “medical internationalism” began in the 1960s with the regime sending doctors to Algeria during its war with France. Since then, this program continues, taking advantage recently of covid pandemic to expand its oversees medical missions, sending thousands of doctors to other countries to make up for lost tourism revenue due to the pandemic.
 
The United States is not the Cuban people’s primary problem. As with most countries, the problems are self-induced.

If there is anything that has been learned over the past 35 years is the best way to improve the quality of life of poor citizens of the world is to allow them access to free market economies.

You don't see the contradiction there? The US blocks the inflow of goods to Cuba, preventing a free market. How then, is the US not the primary problem?

Can you also explain why Burundi is the poorest nation in the world, despite having a capitalist economy since 1884?
 
You don't see the contradiction there? The US blocks the inflow of goods to Cuba, preventing a free market. How then, is the US not the primary problem?
Can you also explain why Burundi is the poorest nation in the world, despite having a capitalist economy since 1884?
The United States does not have a naval blockade around Cuba blocking the inflow (and outflow—an important part of an economy) of goods to the island nation. Now what the US does have in place is called an embargo. And an embargo restricts the flow of goods and services into and out of the United States if the are from or going to Cuba.

I’ll comment on Burundi after you explain how a centralized economy is going to solve Burundi’s economic problems.
 
The United States does not have a naval blockade around Cuba blocking the inflow (and outflow—an important part of an economy) of goods to the island nation. Now what the US does have in place is called an embargo. And an embargo restricts the flow of goods and services into and out of the United States if the are from or going to Cuba.

The US disallows US companies and subsidiaries from trading with Cuba. It also pressures foreign companies to refrain from trade. This blocks the inflow of goods. Blocks is not the same word as blockade. The US embargo has cost the Cuban economy as estimated $144 billion. That is not a "free market".
I’ll comment on Burundi after you explain how a centralized economy is going to solve Burundi’s economic problems.

Why would I explain that? That's not a claim I've made.
 
The Castroist regime runs the island’s healthcare system. It acts as the main employer of Cuba’s healthcare workers, who cannot practice medicine privately. They are coerced to join medical missions, in order to avoid losing their jobs and jeopardizing their career advancement. According to the UN Traffic In Persons report of 2021, Cuba has not addressed its “exploitative and coercive policies” in the medical missions, which are “clear indicators of human trafficking.”
 
A group of the 610 Cuban doctors who were hired by Mexico to work in marginalized areas. (Twitter/@zoerobledo)
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 11 April 2023 — The Cuban specialists who arrived last January in the Mexican state of Morelos and proclaimed their experience in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Pakistan, “are not in position” because they lack a professional identification card. According to the president of the Federated Colleges of Medicine A.C., María Reyna Bárcenas Hurtado, “about 20 health workers” have already been returned to Mexico City.

Bárcenas Hurtado told 14ymedio that during monitoring by the health centers of Axochiapan, Ocuituco, Tetecala and Temixco, it was found that the specialties of the Cuban doctors “do not correspond to what is needed in these hospitals, especially in the Temixco region.”

The last week of March, the leader of the Union of the Ministry of Health, Gil Magadán Salazar, said that the specialists “had no experience” and stressed that “the official Mexican regulation requires doctors to have a professional credential to practice, and they don’t meet the requirement because they don’t have the document from Cuba.”
Click link above for full article.
Of the Cuban doctors that arrive in the State of Morelos, about 20 have been sent back to Mexico City, because lack of credential. The official Mexican regulation requires doctors to have a professional credential to practice. In order to be hire they must be certified by the Medical College. The Cuban company that handle the contract, which is accused of human trafficking and forced labor, receives $2,000 per doctor each month.
 
Occhiuto gave them a “warm welcome” and admitted that the initiative had drawn criticism, but that there was now a “will to cooperate.” (Facebook/Roberto Occhiuto)
14ymedio, Havana, 5 August 2023 — A contingent of 120 Cuban doctors arrived this Thursday in Calabria, in southwestern Italy, as confirmed by Roberto Occhiuto, president of the region. “I said it and I repeat it: they are not going to steal any jobs from Italian doctors,” said the politician, given the suspicions that the hiring of the group has aroused, as it the 51 healthcare workers that have been working in the province since last January.

“They will give us great help,” said Occhiuto, who claimed that the Cubans had “great experience, widely appreciated both by the Italian doctors who worked with them and by the patients in the hospitals they treated.” The official hopes that, given the difficulties that the Calabrian health system is going through, according to Occhiuto, the island’s physicians will help “keep the departments and hospitals open.”
Click link above for full article.
These 120 slave Cuban doctors will joint another 50 already there, despite complaints from unemployed Italian health workers. Dozens of countries do not accept Cuban doctors because of their low qualification and understand that they are being enslaved due to their low salaries pay to them by the Castroist regime, who pocket most of the money pay to it by countries that contract them.
 
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Occhiuto gave them a “warm welcome” and admitted that the initiative had drawn criticism, but that there was now a “will to cooperate.” (Facebook/Roberto Occhiuto
14ymedio, Havana, 5 August 2023 — A contingent of 120 Cuban doctors arrived this Thursday in Calabria, in southwestern Italy, as confirmed by Roberto Occhiuto, president of the region. “I said it and I repeat it: they are not going to steal any jobs from Italian doctors,” said the politician, given the suspicions that the hiring of the group has aroused, as it the 51 healthcare workers that have been working in the province since last January.

“They will give us great help,” said Occhiuto, who claimed that the Cubans had “great experience, widely appreciated both by the Italian doctors who worked with them and by the patients in the hospitals they treated.” The official hopes that, given the difficulties that the Calabrian health system is going through, according to Occhiuto, the island’s physicians will help “keep the departments and hospitals open.”
Click ling above for full article.
These 120 slave Cuban doctors will joint another 50 already there, despite complaints from unemployed Italian health workers. Dozens of countries do not accept Cuban doctors because of their low qualification and understand that they are being enslaved due to their low salaries pay to them by the Castroist regime, who pocket most of the money pay to it by countries that contract them.
 
Local, Devona, 08/07/2023

Where are the Cuban doctors? Today the island has 31,308 fewer health workers than in 2021

The lack of doctors and other health professionals puts at risk a health system that was exemplary in the Third World, but that today barely covers the basic needs of an aging population with chronic diseases and that resorts to barter and mutual aid to alleviate the health deficit.

“There are no doctors here, nor laboratory technicians in the emergency room,” a doctor from the northeastern province of Holguín told the digital newspaper `Café Fuerte’, who refused to be identified, but assured that “the bosses know (the deterioration of the public health) because it is a recurring theme in all guard deliveries.”
Click link above for full article.
According to data provided by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), in January 2023, a total of 23,792 Cuban doctors were part of medical missions in 56 countries. The regime is making millions of dollars from its medical missions abroad, a modern-day version of human trafficking, a form of international organize crime.
 
The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) indicated the at the end of 2022 Cuba had 94.066 doctors, 12,0065 less than in 2021, which have left the health system. Many of them left the country and others choose to work in more lucrative jobs like in the tourism sector and as taxi drivers, where they receive tips in dollars.
 
The deterioration of the public health system is evident. There is lack of qualified personnel, shortage of supplies, medicines, and hygiene in hospital institutions. Surgeons complains because there are no sutures, gloves or surgical instruments. The regime statistics shows 31,308 fewer health workers than in 2021. The stamped of doctors and other health workers is unstoppable.
 
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