Cuban Snakepit Story

From the Wash Post:

Twenty-six patients at Cuba's largest hospital for the mentally ill died this week during a cold snap, the government said Friday.

Human rights leaders cited negligence and a lack of resources as factors in the deaths, and the Health Ministry launched an investigation that it said could lead to criminal proceedings.

Yeah, yeah, worse happens here, right? You can practically hear Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, or some other Castro apologist rejoindering: "Sure, but at least they had free health care." Also from the Post story:

Communist Cuba provides free health care to all its citizens but, though the quality of its medical system is celebrated in leftist circles around Latin America, it is also plagued by shortages. Patients are expected to bring their own sheets and towels and sometimes their own food during hospital stays.

The government blames the shortages on the U.S. trade embargo, though the embargo does not prevent the direct sale of medicine or medical supplies to the island.

Whole story here.

Comments

[Tom Walls]

That's why Elian Gonzalez really went back to Cuba. Free health care!

[I, Kahn O'Clast]

A woman in Saint Petersburg, Russia told me that everything was so much better back in the Leningrad days. She put it this way:

"Everything now is so expensive. Back during the Soviet times everything was cheap. Of course, nothing was available, but the prices were cheap."

[heller]

Ayn Rand once got her middle-aged sister to come to the U.S. from Russia. She only stayed for a few weeks, complaining that American culture was too commercialized, there were too many brands, and that life in communist Russia was simpler and better. She denounced Rand's novel set in Soviet Russia, We the Living, as exaggerated. When people are used to living a certain way for a while, they don't want to admit that their life could have been better.

[RCTL]

Insight from a child.

[The Libertarian Guy]

Chad is Ayn Rand's middle-aged sister?

[Don't kid yourself]

"Yeah, yeah, worse happens here, right?" No, the same things happen here.

[Abdul]

I've read more medical malpractice cases than anyone will ever want to see. Surgical instruments sewn inside patients, re-using endoscopes without sterilizing them, wrong body parts being amputated. I've even seen a case where an ER admitted a pizza before a woman in labor while she was hemrohhaging.

I have never, ever, seen 26 cases of fatal hypothermia in a single hospital at a single time.

Come to think of it, never ever seen one case of that.

That pretty much don't happen here.

[Don't kid yourself]

Abdul, I may have confused freezing to death to drowning to death. The point is negligence.

[Abdul]

When did 26 people in a hospital drown to death?

Was this some sort of hospital boat?

[Don't kid yourself]

Abdul, 35 deaths at St. Rita's.
http://www.kensavage.com/archi.....e-tragedy/

[wylie]

So it actually was a hospital boat...once the storm hit I mean.

[Don't kid yourself]

Wylie, the irony of your silly remark is that it is somewhat true. "The death toll at St. Rita's likely would have been higher if not for one fortuitous fact: Because the residents' mattresses were wrapped in plastic liners, they floated."

[Enyap]

Quite a difference between a hurricane that destroys an entire city, and a caribbean cold snap that doesn't even get below freezing temperature.

[Don't kid yourself]

Enyap, "Authorities have said the Manganos ignored a mandatory evacuation order and refused an offer of two buses to take their residents to safety the day before Katrina made landfall."

[Nick]

Those things like sewing gauze pads inside of people and "labor and pizza delivery" would not stop happening if government ran healthcare. Bad things would still happen and new bad things would be piled on. Leftists don't seem to understand you get bad + more bad instead of just bad.

[Don't kid yourself]

Nick, I think you mean dead + dead = more dead. The point is negligence can and will happen in any system.

[Robert]

Sure, the lady was hemorrhaging...but what condition was the pizza in, ever think of that, huh?

But seriously, just that it would've gotten so cold in Cuba is amazing too, and not upland, but in coastal Havana?! But what's with quoting the temperature in a particular neighborhood? Is Havana so big it has micro-climates of significance?

Then again, considering how cold it was in southern Fla.... Somehow I tend to think of that small stretch of water's making more of a difference in temperature variation than I guess I should think.

[Naga Sadow]

All I know about Cuba is that they have all the good cigars. We have to invade them. We've always had to.

[Old Mexican]

Communist Cuba provides free health care to all its citizens but, though the quality of its medical system is celebrated in leftist circles around Latin America, it is also plagued by shortages. Patients are expected to bring their own sheets and towels and sometimes their own food during hospital stays.

It is no different than the free healthcare system in Mexico, set up for laborers and employees (anybody that's on payroll) called the Mexican Institute of Social Security (yes, they used to handle pensions as well). The hospitals have a nurse shortage because a) they are not getting paid and b) the private and university hospitals offer better pay and training. They are terribly short on beds, linens, medicine and even air conditioning (!!) You share a room meant for 4 with 7 other people. The hospital will not let you stay unless a relative or friend stays there as well to feed you and clean you (you know, because of the shortage of nurses). This is all true - I LIVED it.

You might say "Hey, it's Mexico. The system is corrupt"; and the answer would be "It would not matter if the system was handled by veritable angels, it would still go bankrupt!"

Many big companies actually offer catastrophic medical insurance to their employees despite the high rate of taxation for Social Security (about 12.5 to 25% depending on your wages). This allows employees to at least attend one of the charity hospitals that are much better than the free system, and I can say it is better than some hospitals in the US (that is, giving more bang for the buck.)

So it is no suprise to me that people would freeze to death in a government-run hospital in a Caribbean country.

[Johnny Longtorso]

Only under socialism can you freeze to death in the tropics.
-- Johnny Longtorso

[The Art-P.O.G.]

Good one, Longtorso.

[R C Dean]

More casualties of global warming. Their blood is on Exxon's hands. And Dick Cheney's.

[K]

I think George & Laura B. snuck in there during the night. They stole all the blankets and disconnected the heating system.

[NeonCat]

If they had been full of revolutionary fervor they would never have frozen. Obviously Yanquis are to blame for their reactionary ideas and practices infecting these poor Cubans who will never recover and forward the revolution.

[Nick]

It's amazing stupidity and irony that a communist would blame capitalists for not having free trade with them. If their system is so great they should be able to survive all on their own. It just reinforces that the wealth of others is required for some to get free shit.

[Reformed Republican]

Communist Cuba provides free health care to all its citizens but . . . it is also plagued by shortages.

Could there possibly be a connection there?

Also, if there are shortages, not everyone is getting free health care.

[Big B]

Oh, they are getting no cost health care. Whether its any good or not, that another question.

[Marc]

Jeebus, Nick, way to blow the Castroite dog-whistle today.

Post some stuff about 9/11 and ID while you're at it, and see if you can hit the trifecta.

[Xeones]

Notice: no Chetards on this thread.

...yet.

[Abdul]

If Che were around, those people would never have frozen to death.

He'd have shot them first.

[Banjos Kick Ass!]

They are too busy masturbating to Motorcycle Diaries, and I think they have an underwater basket weaving class around this time, but they should be back in their dorms in a few hours.

[Tulpa]

At first I thought you were referring to Cheeto-eaters.

[D. Stonehouse]

This is no different than what happens in Canada. My father has spent the last two nights sleeping on a recliner in emergency in Calgary waiting for a room and surgery to get his gall bladder removed. Next to him a pregnant women has been there for two days as well with high blood pressure worries. Last night I took them up quilts because they were freezing

[Isaac Bartram]

Gee, all the Canadians I know have been telling me they fixed that whole waiting list thingummy back in '01 or so.

Besides, I though Alberta was so flush with oil money that they never had to worry about any shortages. 🙂

[Tulpa]

While I don't think the embargo can legitimately be blamed for this, it once again drives home the point that our idiotic, pointless embargo on Cuba gives the disgusting Castrato regime a handy excuse for everything that goes wrong.

[D. Stonehouse]

Mr. Bartram
I should have added my father is in around a 1,000 sq. foot room with around 15 other patients. When I went in there last night I said this place is worse than Haiti. Being in Alberta, the people all laughed. The Alberta system has been slowly disintegrating for decades. When I was a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s it was world-class. But that's the way socialized systems work--in the beginning people still have vestiges of personal responsibility so the system isn't over-taxed. As time goes on, people abuse it, governments fail to replenish captital stock, and innovation dies. The result is systemic failure. Any honest Albertan will tell you that's where were at.

[jester]

Cuba has a 99% literacy rate. With a huge variety of exciting titles by the likes of Marx and Engels, who wouldn't be excited about reading.

Here in America we just have shitty books about papist plots and vampire teens and court room dramas. No wonder we all play with our wiis.

[PIRS]

If only we had a public education system in the United States this might be able to be turned around.

[Banjos Kick Ass!]

Maybe you can round up and send to the firing lines all those stupid Americans who read vampire novels and books about papist plots. Maybe then you can create the "intellectual" paradise you always dreamed of.

[PIRS]

El gobierno, no s?lo en d?cadas, sino tambi?n durante m?s de dos siglos, ha sido notablemente corrupto, brutal y tir?nico.

[jester]

the mentally ill

How convenient. They got rid of some more opposition.

[PIRS]

With such an excelent healthcare and public welfare system all the Haitian earthquake victims should be very happy to go to Cuba.

[The Libertarian Guy]

The trade embargo had NOTHING to do with this. Other countries trade with Cuba, so it's not a lack of income - it's the fucking Castro regime. Period.

[Tulpa]

Yes, and economic conservatism had nothing to do with the cause of the current financial crisis and recession. That's not going to stop the powers that be from blaming it. Likewise, the embargo gives the Castros and their admirers a handy excuse.

[jester]

I think an amusement park called Che-Mundo would be awesome. It would have to be built in a place like Cuba to avoid lawsuits. Wait a minute...

[PIRS]

How about Guantanamo Bay! We could turn the base there into an amusement park and use the profits to help pay down the national debt!

[jester]

...and lefties could 'volunteer' to be eliminated, so to speak, since they'd think they were going down there for some serious Che-stroke, whereas in reality they'd be yulbrynnered a la West World. Perfect!

[Robert]

Hey, yeah, how cold was it in Guantanamo, on the opposite coast? Didn't they have the detainees there in tents because it, like, never gets cold there and it's fun?