Michael Moore is scum

Gotta give you five stars for the deft use of, "I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you"!

 

Pern, read up about Cuba's health care system and you'll realize two things. It is puny compared to what it would take to run something similar in the U.S. It's also the result of good preventative medicine, despite the original link on this thread that made it sound like all kinds of medical innovations are coming out of Cuba--the cancer vaccines mentioned notwithstanding, the U.S. leads the world by far in new treatments and medical breakthroughs, and Cuba isn't even on the map.

We can certainly learn a lot from the simple truism that it is cheaper to prevent illness than it is to cure it. But maybe it's worth taking a step back and considering why Cuba learned that lesson and the U.S. hasn't been forced to. There is extreme poverty in Cuba, people with not enough food to eat and an unbelievable portion of the population living in ramshackle homes without electricity. Meanwhile Castro and his cronies subjugate the population and live fat and happy. Even if they funnelled everything going into their health care system into eradicating poverty, the Cuban population would STILL live in misery. So essentially they have a slightly lower infant mortality rate than the U.S. (what Moore is exploiting), but at the cost of individual liberty and a standard of living that doesn't even begin to approach the standard of living of the typical American. Is this something Moore will be pointing out in his film when he holds up Cuba as an indictment of the U.S.? Because if he doesn't, he's full of shit.

 

Castro is the one controlling everything--including the freedom of his population and access to health care. I don't have to equate the two. They go hand in hand in Cuba, because everything there is managed by a dictator. You live completely under his thumb. You therefore can't cherry pick the one thing you like about life under Castro (and honestly, the health of the Cuban population is not better than it is here; life expectancy is longer here.) while ignoring everything else that constitutes the price of that thing you like.

The access to health care in Cuba comes at an unsustainable cost for a FREE country. As I said, you could funnel everything he's spending on health care clinics into eradicating poverty and it wouldn't make a dent in the mess he's made of his population. As far as civil liberties go, that is another price of life under Castro. Are you willing to give up all freedoms and live in extreme poverty, for a dictator who throws you a bone with a clinic down the street that tries to prevent the serious illnesses that the society he's created can't afford to treat? Is the truth about what I am pointing out going to be featured at all in Moore's film?

 

You're having the conversation you want to have, not the one that was the basis for this thread... This thread was about Michael Moore holding up Cuba as something we should be emulating. I pointed out why that this disingenuous and ridiculous. The price of the "free" health care clinics in Cuba is electricity and food. I was discussing the story that you are taking pains now not to discuss. I don't think i can be any more clear than that.