No amount of propaganda by Cuba’s communist regime or cover provided by the media can hide the sad and horrific reality of Cuba’s socialist healthcare and the Castro regime’s modern-day slave trade in doctors.

John Suarez in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

Setting the record straight on the Cuban healthcare system and medical missions program

Debunking the Castro regime’s healthcare claims

There are many myths that the Castro regime has successfully propagated over the years. The international community deeply believes one of the biggest and most dangerous whoppers, that Cuba’s healthcare system under the current communist system is a success that turned the island into a medical super power. This fabricated fiction needs to be addressed to save lives both inside and outside of the island at this critical time.

These are some of the facts that Havana has spent decades covering up.

The healthcare system that existed in Cuba prior to 1959 was superior to what came after. Professor James W. McGuire and Laura B. Frankel in their paper published in the Latin American Research Review “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900-1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes” found that “Cuba’s progress relative to other Latin American countries at reducing infant mortality was even greater from 1900 to 1960 than from 1960 to 1995. During the earlier period, Cuba led all Latin American countries for which data are available at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. From 1960 to 1995, by contrast, it came in fourth and fifth respectively.”

Healthcare in Cuba is not free, nor are the medical missions sent around the world, and at times can be expensive, and unforgiving. Tourists visiting Cuba who have become ill found that they were presented expensive bills for medical care received.

In the summer of 2013 Sheila Dumbleton, age 57, fell ill six days into a birthday trip to Cuba was hospitalized before passing away. “Sheila was left to die because we had no money to pay for treatment, it’s as simple as that. If she had fallen ill in this country she would still be here,” said her husband Ray Dumbleton, who is from the United Kingdom, adding, “As soon as the hospital knew we couldn’t pay, they just left her to deteriorate. All the doctors kept saying to us was ‘payment, payment’ but we simply didn’t have that sort of money to give them.” He wasn’t even allowed to bid farewell to his wife when she died. To add insult to injury, the Cuban hospital wouldn’t release the body, and threatened the husband with prison if he didn’t come up with the $26,700 bill.

Cuba’s health tourism effort has roused bitter reproach from the nation’s critics, who accuse the Castro regime of creating an apartheid system of health care, in which foreigners – and Cuban party elite – get top-class service while average Cubans must make do with dilapidated facilities, outdated equipment and meagerly stocked pharmacies.These greatly contrast with Cuban elite hospitals promoted by “health tourism” enterprises such as SERVIMED.

Hilda Molina, one of Cuba ‘s most noted scientists, founder and a former director of Havana ‘s International Center for Neurological Restoration broke with the regime and resigned both from her high-level position there and as a member of Cuba ‘s National Assembly to protest the system of medical apartheid.