JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Huji)There is a great deal that could be said about what is wrong with our health care system, but I would rather discuss what is right about Cuba’s health care program, from medical training to medical treatment.

During the Affordable Health Care debate, many people were asking why the president and Congress didn’t simply expand Medicare to everyone in the United States. Instead, there is a movement in DC to cut Medicare benefits. To expand on the theme of my last BuzzFlash commentary, wars for oil, the reason they want to cut Medicare funding is because the US government spends not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars on weapons, wars, and surveillance.

But in Cuba, it’s different. In Cuba, people are more important than profits. Instead of investing in bombs, Cuba invests in: 1) education, including medical training; and 2) decent housing and food for all Cubans: although Cuba is a poor country, no one is starving and no one is homeless.

By contrast, in the US, there is a strong connection between poverty and medical need. Cuba’s commitment to health care is seen as a human right, not as a privilege for only those who can afford it.

My question is: Why doesn't America take care of its people like that?

Good question. Try asking the president and congressional members. If they’re honest they’ll tell you that it’s more important to build weapons and to drop bombs on “enemies” than it is to care for those in the US.

The Cuban government understands that decent health care includes good diets, good housing, education and employment.

Quality health care in Cuba begins with a superior medical training program, which leads to the question: Why are US students trying to enroll in Cuba’s Medical Schools?

The average cost of medical school loans for four years in the US range from $170,000 to $400,000 dollars of debt. So the minute they graduate, young doctors are immediately under pressure to pay off thousands of dollars in loans. By contrast, Cuba has allowed students from many countries to study medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) at no cost. The competition has increased in the last years, reducing availability to only ten U.S. students a year.

The only condition is that after six years of training at ELAM, graduating doctors bring the model of primary and preventive health care to distressed communities that need it the most. Contrast that caring attitude to congressional Republicans who can’t wait to slash food stamps for poor US families.

In fairness, the US does offer merit-based and military scholarships but they’re extremely limited to a small percentage of medical students.

I’m talking about priorities: a single federal check to an arms dealer in the amount of $10 billion dollars could easily pay for the first four years of nearly all the 2013 medical school applicants combined.

As to the question of whether or not Cuba’s training is as good as US medical schools: the majority of American students that graduated from Cuba’s ELAMpassed US medical exams with flying colors, and went on to intern at U.S. hospitals.

Most people believe that Cuba’s medical facilities are antiquated models from the 1950s. Although it’s true that Cuba’s hospitals may not have all the latest technologically advanced equipment, Cuban medical education is equal to that of the US in medical procedures. Moreover, Cuba’s hospitals may not be new, but they are immaculately clean.

A study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety claims that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to US hospitals for care suffer some type of preventable harm in the hospital that contributes to their death. That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in the nation.

Cuban medical care is highly advanced. Surgeons at the Ameijeiras BrothersHospital have performed numerous heart transplants in the past decade. Researchers have done pioneering vaccine research for meningitis C and cholera.

Cuba has lower infant and adult mortality rates than the US, and it has a life expectancy nearly equal to ours, if not better.

In addition to establishing well-staffed clinics that serve the Cuban population, doctors are not pressured into evaluating a patient under a 15-minute schedule. The doctor will get to know the patient’s habits for a fuller understanding of his or her health condition. Clinics are thoroughly integrated into Cuban communities, in part, because they blend Western techniques with “natural and traditional medicine.

In order to understand what is meant by “preventative care” you have to understand that Cubans live very simply because of the US embargo against Cuba. I should stop here and explain what Cuba was like before the Revolution. People in the US are not supposed to know that in 1959 US corporations controlled more than 80 percent of Cuba’s mines, cattle ranches, utilities, and oil refineries, 50 percent of the railroads, and 40 percent of the sugar industry. United Fruit controlled a million acres of Cuba’s land. As a result of US corporate ownership for the few, the majority of Cubans suffered from extreme conditions of poverty.

In some ways the embargo has been a curse, in other ways, it’s been a blessing. For example, Cuba was forced to become quite creative in establishing organic ways of growing food. Contrary to the United States’ mass food markets of GMO foods, citizens of Cuba grow their own gardens at home with government support, and/or they buy at farmers’ markets that offer organically grown fruits and vegetables. This has reduced obesity in Cuba, a problem that plagues US children.

In the US, abusive exploitations are produced from a profit-only, privatized medical system that traps patients into an unending greedy wheel of drug companies, insurers, doctors, HMOs, and hospitals—all looking for a way to keep the profits spinning at the expense of compassionate, intelligent and pragmatic health care.

Bombs both destroy and create new angry “enemies”that then renews the cycle of US military intervention: that’s what the US government is good at doing at the cost of providing health care to everyone regardless of income, while Cuba invests in health care, education and proper housing for their citizens.

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Jacqueline Marcus is a contributing guest writer for BuzzFlash at Truthout.org. She's the editor of ForPoetry.com and EnvironmentalPress.com and author of Close to the Shore by Michigan State University Press. Her E-book, Man Cannot Live on Oil, Alone: Time to end our dependency on oil before it ends us, is available at Kindle Books.