Why Do Cuban Citizens Have Better Health-care Than We In The U.S.?

Cuba's health care system is an international success story, despite the U.S. embargo. Almost 50 million people in the United States lack adequate health care coverage. How is it possible that Cuba, an island nation of limited resources, can provide health care to all of its citizens?

The U.S. government has refused to allow exports of medicine and medical supplies to Cuba because "it would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests." This policy is designed to systematically strip Cuba of essential resources.

Since most major new drugs are developed by U.S. owned pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. can and does block export to Cuba of more than 50 percent of new medicines available on the world market. Despite this form of oppression, Cuba has galvanized its efforts to remain self-sufficient, and no hospitals have closed. The island nation is known the world over for its advances in medical research.

Among other feats, Cuba has developed a Meningitis B vaccine, a less expensive interferon as well as AIDS and cancer vaccines. Cuba has the highest rate of public health services in Latin America and one of the highest physician to population ratios in the world.

If the United States changed its social and economic policies and priorities its citizens and those of other countries would benefit greatly.

“OF ALL THE FORMS OF INEQUALITY, INJUSTICE IN HEALTH CARE IS THE MOST SHOCKING AND INHUMANE.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Part 1: A Hard Look At Latin America

A LEGACY OF INEQUALITY

Over 500 years ago Europeans invaded the Americas. Seeking trade routes and treasure (the Native Peoples resources). They brought guns and metal swords and armor. Using these, and exploiting religious beliefs and local rivalries (divide and conquer), they quickly made themselves absolute rulers over millions of Native Americans. In Latin America, the Spanish rules with a cold, calculated brutality. Native languages, customs, and religions were done away with.

The social structure of Latin America was shaped by CONQUEST. Beneath a veneer of modernity and democracy, the social structure of these countries remains essentially feudal. A small wealthy, ruling elite, mostly descendants of the European conquerors, dominates social, economic, and political life. Although mestizos, Indians, and blacks make up the majority of the population in most countries, they have little voice in the government. The concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a few forces most of the people into poverty.

This vast inequality gives rise to "social unrest" as the poor struggle for equality and social justice. Unwilling to give up their privileged social position, the elites respond with repression: arrests, torture, and death squads. As President Kennedy observed many years ago, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." Social movements for equality and democracy continue to emerge, generating ongoing conflict in the region. The tragic cycle of revolutions and civil wars in Latin America - Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Columbia, among others - are products of this historically unequal social structure.

Cuban 5

This September will mark 13 years of unjust imprisonment of five men; Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez, known as the “Cuban Five,” after their frame-up on federal charges here in the United States.

It is important to know the role that the U.S. government has played in supporting anti-Cuba terrorists, in attempting to subvert Cuban society. In 1959, after U.S. supported Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown, Miami became a base of C.I.A. operations against Cuba and its revolution.

Many of Batista’s tyrannical police and army torturers took refuge in Miami. The C.I.A. recruited and trained 4,000 Cuban right wing exiles to impair the Castro administration and terrorize the Cuban people. Cuba’s numerous appeals to Washington regarding this matter were ignored. Consequently, the Cuban Five infiltrated Cuban exile terrorist organizations in Miami, which had carried out attacks on Cuba for decades so that they could stop them.

After their arrests, the Five were illegally held in solitary confinement for 17 months before trial, and the judge denied their request to move the trial out of Miami. The Cuban Five were convicted on June 8, 2001 and sentenced from 15 years to double life. Although their convictions were overturned in federal appeals in 2005 the Bush administration appealed, and the trial was upheld.

LEARN MORE: www.freethefive.org