ObamaCare, Castro, and the Future of our Health Care
As the Obama administration and its supporters cheer the passage of ObamaCare — the disastrous health care bill pushed through both houses of Congress by stealth, sleazy deals and perhaps unconstitutional measures — President Obama has received congratulations on the accomplishment from a most unlikely source who should know what America’s health care system is likely to look like in the near future — Fidel Castro.
The Associated Press reports that “Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform ‘a miracle’ and a major victory for Obama’s presidency, but couldn’t help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.” The report continues: “‘We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his (Obama’s) government,’ Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president’s hand against lobbyists and ‘mercenaries.’”
As Castro explained, “It is really incredible that 234 years after the Declaration of Independence … the government of that country has approved medical attention for the majority of its citizens, something that Cuba was able to do half a century ago.”
As for el jefe himself, he was not about to trust the Cuban health care system that he and Michael Moore love so much for his own treatment. When he was stricken three years ago with a serious intestinal disorder, he had a top Spanish physician flown into Cuba to treat him. When that doctor’s schedule proved inflexible, the British press reported, Castro was then flown into Spain where he received treatment in a private restricted wing of the Gregorio Maranon Hospital in Madrid.
The problem, of course, is where will we go for treatment when in a few years, our new system goes into effect. My my wife just got back from having lunch with an old friend who recently received some shocking news. She received a letter in the mail from her trusted primary care doctor who informed her — and all of her patients — that from now on, she would not be able to treat patients on Medicare.
It does not pay enough to make it possible for her to stay in practice and accept patients who rely on it any longer. Hence all her patients who wish to use her services, would have to pay her full fee out of their own pockets. Our friend promptly called over ten other recommended doctors to see if she could see them. The answer: None would treat her. They simply could not take on Medicare patients.
“President Obama has got congratulations on the accomplishment from a most unlikely source”
Unlikely source? We should not be in the least bit surprised that Fidel Castro is praising Barack Obama for jamming government health cared own our throats. We are drifting towards socialism. The sad thing is that perhaps most Democratic Party members of Congress think highly of the Cuban dictator. They are essentially on the same page. Today’s Democrat leaders are far left-wingers who dress and speak rather conservatively. George Lakoff has taught them how best to bamboozle the American public with deceitful center-right rhetoric.
The lady friend of Ron Radosh’s wife may have to move to a border area so that she can travel to Mexico for her health care. And I am not joking! Mexican doctors are going to see many more American patients in the very near future. I must concede that I know little about Martin J. Sklar. That will, however, soon change. I’ve just ordered his book, The United States as a Developing Country: Studies in U.S. History in the Progressive Era and the 1920s.
Castro’s praise got Marco Rubio a few more votes in Southern Florida.
I’m sure Michael Moore is pleased by Castro’s remarks. Although I doubt Moore will be heading to Havana to get liposuction and a tummy tuck any time soon.
Ok, lets get this straight, Castro and Cuba are somehow connected to Health Care Reform in America and fixing massive insurance company fraud.
I need more coffee. After a few cups, I will try reading this one again.
Good Luck !
With Fidel ‘fist-bumping’ the air over your tyrannical socialist takeover of ‘health-care’, who needs frienemies?
——–
After 4 months on a wait-list and 5 hours with a crying baby in a waiting room:
“Doogie Howser, M.D. er, I mean, ‘Julio Estrada aka Pookie, M.D.’ er, no, ‘Bunifa Latifa Halifa Sharifa Jackson, M.D.’ will see you now.” You are shown to a broom closet with a chair to wait another three hours.
0-care is ZERO-CARE and it’s gonna suck eggs.
So Poor Citizen has finally confirmed what we have all known for a long time, that he cannot READ. Well maybe if he wasn’t so intent on KILLING people all the time (dont forget THOUSANDS DIE when he writes he told us so) then maybe he would have more time to go back to school, or as he would put it skool, for some English comprehension lessons.
Actually Cuba’s health care system ranks very close to ours: we’re slightly behind them on infant mortality rates, but we’re ranked slightly ahead of them overall (that is if you don’t factor in cost performance).
Cuba is not so bad.
You don’t have to worry about a Toyota suddenly accelerating on the interstate and turning you into a kamikaze for the Divine Emperor.
http://www.danheller.com/images/LatinAmerica/Cuba/Cars/cars-y.jpg
Sklar was bang on, Ron. You’re in a “proto-fascist tyranny, American style.”
I’ve been to Cuba several times and used their “system”. You may die trying to find a doctor or a clinic of any kind. Like in the USSR when I worked there in the 70s, they’re not signed or lit and a mite hidden.
When you find a “clinic” the doctors are not there, because they make hard money at the resorts for foreign tourists, where they hang out and where there’s some equipment.
I live in Latin America — the free part, where like the USA until now, it’s run by gangsters instead of dictators. Medicine is still freely practised like it was in the U.S. fifty years ago, but with more modern equipment and no FDA control. The U.S. contagion is spreading, however, so come on down before it’s too late.
BC: so you believe the Cuban govt data, while their isn’t even good cause to believe the U.S. data?
BC, once again with the infant mortality lie? We don’t have higher infant mortality. We have higher mortality statistics because of how we classify premies and because we don’t lie. We go to great efforts to save these kids. In godless socialist hells, like your beloved Cuba, they don’t and they don’t count them as live births.
And do you really believe the statistics spread by a communist dictatorship? I guess that someone who could vote for the current batch of Democrats can believe about anything.
Here’s a headline that is actually worth your concern:
“The Vatican and Child Rearing”
If Obama doesn’t have to use Obamacare, then neither do I. If Congress doesn’t have to use Obamacare, then neither should we.
These people really have lost all conception of what America is about. I’ll be damned if I and my family are going to receive sub-standard care while the elected “representatives” -who choose not to represent the people- get their limo-liberal care.
This can’t stand. Not in America.
Hoo boy . . .
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003260011
Any questions?
Re the prospect that “the American system initiated by Obama could evolve into a ‘proto-fascist tyranny, American style’,” one should consider yet another aspect of the Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the US healthcare system: the standup of a national health corps (a little-known if far-reaching part of the recently passed govt-takeover bill), complete with military-style active-duty/reserve officers and infrastructure. One should likewise consider why it was also important for the Obamunists to attach higher-education funding to the overhaul bill, other than as a revenue generator for govt expansion. My thought is that it is intended to build a pool of foot soldiers for both this new-fangled health corps and–even more troubling–the national security force that Obama himself announced.
Welcome to Zimbabwe/Cuba (replete with the eradication of free-market capitalism, loss of personal freedoms, and the advent of third-world “medicine”) on the Potomac!
Dr. K
Heh, skeeziks posts a video from Media Matters. Think they’re going to give you the truth on the way to “progress”?
For all of the praise that liberals like to bestow on Castro’s health care system, I don’t recall Cuba opening it’s hospital doors to any of the poor souls of Haiti! They’re only a stones throw away. Where were they? I guess that compassionate liberalism has it’s boundaries. Or, maybe the Cubans health care system isn’t worthy of, and doesn’t deserve the accolades of the leftist boot lickers.
“Any questions?”
OK. How does one get foolish enough to believe anything that comes from Media Matters?
Dave T.
It was a videotape. What part of that do you believe didn’t happen? Was that a Victoria Jackson impersonator? Let me guess, you believe Eric Cantor when he said his office was targeted by a liberal gunman, too. Right?
C’mon Poor Citizen don’t be disingenuous. Your feigned misunderstanding of the Castro-Obama connection won’t work here. We are all inured of PrezBo’s complete “bewilderment” that his tactics and antics aren’t accepted as the gospel by a majority of Americans. We already know you and your ilk are ignorant, you don’t have to constantly prove it to us. We get it.
And to staff those clinics he will have a brand new corps of doctors churned out by the Secretary of HHS who now owns the medical school loan facility, and can dictate trerms ot the medivcal shools on programs that she will fund med school loans for. See 42 U.S.C 254q & 254l-1
The new law (Sec. 5205 et seq. ) lifts the cap on commissioned health officers, and end runs the advise and concset for health foicers by “deeming” reserve Service officers (appointed only by the President regular provided $ 4 Billion in loan funding over five years and loans are subject to 6-10 year terms of obligated service (post residency), plus reservist time. In ten years there won’t be a new doctor who has not gone into a centrally approved specialty, and been for a substnatial period indoctrinate in government approved standards of care , among other things likely required training in pregnancy terminations regardless of moral scruple over abortion, and Dr. Emanuel’s “ratonalised” end of life euthanasia “care”
@4
If you can’t understand it sober, it’s unlikely that using drugs is going to make the difference.
To DaveT and pelaut: One source is from the CIA and the other from WHO. And even if you massage in the premie argument, we still suck.
And don’t go bashing on MediaMatter — they are much more credible than any conservative media source or blog.
Skeeziks, it’s not whether Eric Cantor had his office shot up or not. It’s that both Dems and Repubs get death threats, but it sounds like it is the first time that the Left is actively using them for political purposes because they can’t argue the merits of their own bill.
Poor citizen #4
Do you believe anyone here will ever accept your simplistic dribble? It is not a lack of coffee you suffer from…
If socialized medicine is so great why did comrade Fidel have to go the Spain for health care? Why are hopsitals along the US/Canada boarder filled with Canadian’s who can afford to pay out of pocket while the Canadian poor die waiting for treatment?
Let me guess. It must be America’s fault.
“To DaveT and pelaut: One source is from the CIA and the other from WHO.”
The WHO is a radical leftwing UN organization with a political agenda. You can trust them about as much as you can trust the IPCC, which is not at all.
“And even if you massage in the premie argument, we still suck.”
Obamacare will only make it worse.
World Mourns As Communist Darkness Falls Upon America
Hmm. On further inspection of that website’s OTHER links I’m retracting my recommendation even though the article I linked was an interesting read.
:SHOCK: Gah!
BC, you ignorant slut:
WTF do infant mortality rates have to do with health care overall? Bloody little.
Here’s a more relevant stat: 75% of Cuban “doctors” can’t pass the international certification exam for physicians. Half can’t even pass the exam for medical assistants.
In Cuba, medical care is free: and you get exactly what you pay for.
Excellent. For more on Castro and the healthcare debate from a “rights” angle, click here:
http://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/castro-applauds-obamacare-oh-gee-what-a-surprise/
Wondering about America’s Future
An article title such as ”Wondering about America’s Future” spontaneously evokes suppositions that the writer of said article is fatally pessimistic on whether this nation under God is capable of surviving for the near future and for an extended period thereafter.
I could deny that assumption but I won’t.
Personally, I don’t think we can survive for much longer which is not to say the U.S.A. will disappear from the face of the Earth by next Tuesday. Rather, for our children, what the country has been and what it has meant for centuries will become a dim memory.
Our grandchildren may well come to ask, “What’s a democratic republic, Gramps?” or “Will Great Leader Obama always be the president, Mom?”
That’s a pretty gloomy forecast but one which is unavoidable given the state of the nation as it stands today.
However, another major factor often intrudes on pessimistic outlooks, also given the nature of man, and that is a ray or two of hope always trying to pierce the dismal clouds.
It’s the American way and character to be positive and optimistic but even the most positive and optimistic American should take pause at recent events and developments:
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1587)
For more on Castro and the healthcare debate from a “rights” angle, click here:
http://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/castro-applauds-obamacare-oh-gee-what-a-surprise/
10. DaveT:
‘In godless socialist hells, like your beloved Cuba, they don’t and they don’t count them as live births.’
Why do posters keep saying that? It is not true.
In the U.K. every live birth is registered and has a birth certificate.
It is actually you who is believing the infant mortality lie.
21. G.R. Mead: Oh no you are right after reading the sections you posted I can now see the evil plans. The plan being to bring doctors to areas with low levels of medical professionals. Oh the horror, we can’t have rural places get doctors. Why don’t you find something actual bad to complaint about. By the way a law that has been in place since at least 1987. Learn to look at the history of laws, chirst.
“She received a letter in the mail from her trusted primary care doctor who informed her — and all of her patients — that from now on, she would not be able to treat patients on Medicare.”
Suggestion to doctors rejecting Medicare patients: could you ask them if they are willing to pay the difference between the doctor’s fee and the Medicare payment?
I would, if I really trusted my doctor.
I think that if a doctor charges $500, Medicare pays about 80% ($400). The patient has to come up with $100. That’s better than paying the doctor’s full fee. Correct me if I’m wrong.
If you have a skill, act now!
If you’re an electrician, plumber, ASE mechanic, RUN, don’t walk, to your doctor and tell him/her you will trade whatever he/she needs in the way of home/auto repair for reasonable health care. That is, seeing you when you need to be seen, without a six month wait for an appointment and an eight hour wait when you get there.
Do it today!