Government healthcare turned patients into abused cattle, recalls Cuban refugee who lived under Castro

(NaturalNews) Despite having murdered some 30,000 of his own people without a fair trial or due process, former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is somehow a political hero in the eyes of Democratic presidential candidate and avowed socialist Bernie Sanders In 1985, Sanders praised Castro for supplying Cubans with "free" education and "free" government-run healthcare , completely sidestepping the fact that the communist leader also performed mass executions in the spirit of maniacal dictators like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.Though nowhere near as horrendous as these other dictators in terms of the scale of human rights abuses, Fidel Castro's legacy is anything but laudable. And yet, because Castro embraced many of the same political ideologies as Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate believes Castro is worthy of praise and adoration."In 1961, [America] invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world," stated Sanders during an August 8, 1985, interview on the CCTV Center for Media and Democracy's ChannelChittenden County's local government access channel."All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society."You can watch the full CCTV interview with Sanders here To Sanders, it's no big deal that Fidel Castro embraced a philosophy of mass imprisonment, execution without proper trial, and other heinously oppressive political policies that kept Cubans in a perpetual state of subjugation . Since the Cuban people supposedly had access to government "benefits," they should have been grateful, believes Sanders."You know, not to say Fidel Castro and Cuba are perfect – they are certainly not – but just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say the people in these nations feel the same way."Completely out of touch with reality, Sanders seems to have missed the many real-life accounts of Cuban refugees who fled Cuba due to Castro's heavy hand of oppression – the same one that Sanders believes didn't exist, and was just a political construct of the Reagan administration.One such individual is Francisco Castro, a young man from Havana who in a 2013 piece for the Havana Times recalls the grim reality of "free" healthcare in Cuba."One of the first things one sees when arriving in the Emergency Room of the 'Manuel Fajardo' Clinic Surgical University Hospital, is a huge poster in which you can read: 'Your health care is free, but it costs ...', followed by a list of some of the services we are given free, with their prices," Castro says."The fact is that at the infirmary, the thermometer was broken, and at the clinic lab, there was a long line of upset people, while the lab technician held a cheerful telephone conversation, indifferent to any complaint."Castro goes on to explain how he once had to wait over an hour-and-a-half for care for an extreme fever that was believed to be pneumonia – this long wait due to the inherent inefficiency of Cuba's government-run healthcare program. And all this to suffer an incorrect diagnosis at the hands of a corrupt medical system."Does the fact that it costs nothing to us, but to the State, as they let us know, justify the mistreatment and the wrong diagnosis?" Castro asks, noting further abuses he suffered at the "free" health clinic."Sometimes, I wonder how life in Cuba would be, without the subsidies ... Would the attention to people be different? Could money warrant a treatment worthy of human beings?"Perhaps Bernie Sanders needs to ask himself these same questions as he pontificates a Utopian healthcare system that's been repeatedly attempted, and that's repeatedly failed.(Photo credit: TheDailySheeple.com)