That’s an important distinction.

Carrying further the assumptions we operate under (and anyone is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong), the people Moore took to Cuba were suffering from World Trade Center related injuries. This group would do just fine under our system–there are plenty of programs to pay their medical bills.

The idea that Cuban health care is better than American for even the poorest of Americans is just silly.

Cuban hc is so great they needed to import a doc to take care of el barbudo.

The childrens’ hospital I was in in Russia looked better than that.

Geez, even in “1st tier” England, didn’t they suggest to not wash the sheets after a patient leaves, but just turn them over and use them again?

No, it doesn’t. It provides *the* best health care anywhere in the world–not a small feat when you consider the pace of medical advances. Problem is, it’s always so on the cutting edge, that people expect that latest thing to be *affordable* today, which obviously can’t happen. And then the delivery system has all kinds of brakes on it that rachet the cost up–especially for those cutting edge treatments. The oft-cited slow FDA approval of new drugs is simply the tip of the iceberg.

For example, you got leukemia in 1970? You died quickly. You got it in 1980? More often than not, you lived. (I know a guy who is currently 39, that has lived with it since his mid teens. You can’t say that for anyone that is around 50 years old.) However, it was a *lot cheaper* to treat in 1970. I have an uncle pushing 70 that has lived almost half of his live with a rare disease that used to be fatal in months. If he’d been two years older, he would have died ages ago–because he was in the first round of the experimental treatments that worked. Then there is the cousin that died in 2005 at age 49, of a cancer that will probably have much higher treatment success in less than a decade. They were announcing the start of a construction on a new facility to treat those kinds of cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, the week she died.

Those are personal anecdotes that are easily replicated if you look. Heck, each of those three people personally knew many others in the same boat.

Bottom Line: Health care is cheaper in places that “socialize” it, because in such places the pace of medical advances slows enough that people simply die. It’s why socialized societies make a fetish of prenatal care. It’s the one place where they can lead. (As I’ve said many times, preventive care is a different animal.) If you focus on prenatal and early child care, and *neglect* treatment on the elderly side, you statistics look very nice at first glance. Average life expectancy goes up, and anyone with a “quality of life” issue typically gets off the stat sheet and into the graveyard quickly. It doesn’t, however, produce the kind of care we say we want for Granny–or ourselves, if we are approaching Granny age, which is why people come here for treatment, from all over the world, if they can manage it.

If society had a more honest appreciation for the costs and risks of cutting edge treatment, we wouldn’t have a problem. Cutting edge would be labeled such, you’d only try it when normal, cheaper methods were exhausted, and you’d try it knowing that the treatment might kill you. Lawyers not welcome to participate at that point. That’s the only way I can to preserve the rapid advances. There has to be this attitude that once you cross the line into experimental, you are statistically dead. Yesterday you did die. Today, maybe you don’t. But that’s a gift, not an obligation society owes you.

“That’s one idea from me… instead of ranting about Cuba, maybe someone has a better idea?”

If you see why Cuba doesn’t work, you’ll also see why moving towards Cuba, even a little bit, doesn’t help. That said, you left out the need for a serious accounting with the AMA about their low-balled fiction of the number of doctors and nurses this society can reasonably produce.

I haven’t seen it either, but I think it would depend greatly on the individuals he took to Cuba. If they were middle class, insured individuals, then Cuba’s health care wouldn’t hold a candle to ours. If however, they were low-income, uninsured… then anything would be better than their current options here in the States (perhaps with the exception of a local Witch Doctor).

When you have no health care, even third world health care is a better option, isn’t it?

My remarks assumed that this claim is correct–that Moore did indeed take Americans to Cuba for treatment. How to interpret this action except as a statement that they will receive better care in Cuba than in the US?

Markus is right in one regard. Leaving aside the notorious aspects of Castro’s heinous regime (the jailing-killing of homosexuals, the placing of political dissidents in mental hospitals, the impoverishment of the Cuban people while the Cuadillo is a near billionaire, the lack of any kind of basic human rights, etc., etc.), the Cuban health care system is probably better than that in many Third World countries. Unfortunately, the scientific advances of this system have been put to other uses that should be of concern to all of us…..

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagmc121.php

Further, our health care system sucks. We can debate the value of social health care (which I’m not in favor of)… but please, let us not lie to ourselves about the current situation. America can be the Best nation in the world to live in, but only if we honestly and constantly see what problems there are and work to fix them. Today’s health care system needs something… not government intervention, necessarily, but it needs something.

My recommendation is to send all of the trial lawyers to serve in Iraq. No one will mind the causalities and Doctors won’t get sued for more money than their malpracticed patient would ever make in two lifetimes.

In all honesty, though… I think that we could find a compromise in health care. I am of the opinion that it would go something like this:

1. Employers can offer health care as they do today. Employees can get health care as they do today. If an employer offers health care he gets a nice tax break.

2. Employers that don’t offer health care don’t get the tax break.

3. Insurance companies that provide an option for unemployed or low income citizens also get a big tax break.

4. Either State or Federal governments (up for debate) manages a low cost health care system which any American Citizen can join. Their monthly cost should be on par with what most employees pay ($40-$80 or so). This, in theory would be a very large group of people and they should be able to use the same type of bargaining that existing health care providers get.

5. Stronger laws on malpractice suits are put in place to drop the cost of liability insurance.

6. Patents on drugs should be reviewed (I would recommend that the patent holder would be required to provide a name brand and generic themselves, or have a generic partner lab).

7. Realize that there is no 100% fix and continue to try to find improvements in all aspects of American Life.

That’s one idea from me… instead of ranting about Cuba, maybe someone has a better idea?

What a candidate to spice things up!