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Diabetic foot is an indicator of poor quality care. It is a known fact for anyone following the debates that many of the working poor in the USA lack access to healthcare because they don't have employer provided health insurance, might earn too much to get Medicaid, might live in an evil state where expanded Medicaid or subsidized Obamacare isn't available, or are too young to qualify for Medicare.
It isn't that healthcare in the USA is bad. Its that it isn't universally available. Chronic diseases spiral out of control, and such amputations might well happen. Now one can debate as to why this problem exists and this is a question best directed to Trump and the cast of devils which control Congress. It is a POLITICAL issue!
Cuba boasts that it has universally available high quality care. So why are the doctors allowing for diabetes to reach the point where the foot must be amputated? It isn't that the person cannot afford to access such care as it is supposedly free. It isn't that such care isn't available as Cuba trains too many doctors.
Its that the quality of healthcare in Cuba for the poor is very very low! It turns out that Cuba is a very hypocritical nation and so the healthcare available to the rich and well connected is among the best in the world. That available to the poor is abysmal!
Very well said. In the US, if one has sufficient resources, employer or other group health insurance (through school or through union), or medicare and medicaid one can get very good healthcare, including very good preventative healthcare.
But in states were the medicaid expansion was rejected (and all over the nation before Affordable Healthcare) working poor were often not able to get healthcare until absolutely medical crisis, and by then they had had strokes or diabetic foot or something they left them permanently disabled and THEN eligible for medicare or medicaid.
If healthcare in Cuba were great, the Cuban government would have people flying around the world to go to Cuba for medical care. Notice this isn't even on the radar of most people. Cuba is an utter disaster.
Actually diabetes is rampant in Cuba as the cheaper foods that poor people tend to consume are also most likely to lead to diabetes.
That along with lack of access to gyms, etc. They're eating a lot of white rice and other processed carbohydrates, which are just basically consuming a lot of sugar with pretty much everything including fiber stripped out.
If healthcare in Cuba were great, the Cuban government would have people flying around the world to go to Cuba for medical care. Notice this isn't even on the radar of most people. Cuba is an utter disaster.
In fact people do fly to Cuba for healthcare. Yes that "socialist paradise" has a two tier healthcare system. A read of Animal Farm is mandatory for anyone who wishes to understand Cuba. Just be able to pay in US dollars or have health insurance that works in Cuba. Proper healthcare in Cuba isn't free.
But that "free" healthcare that people boast about! A Canadian Castro sympathizer went to Cuba to sing praises of the revolution, and disregarded the advice of his travel agent who warned him to buy health insurance in case he fell ill while there.
Why would he want to waste money given that Cuba's free health insurance is the "best" in the world he snorted?
Well he fell ill with some disease that one gets when the water that one drinks is contaminated. Yes the Castro regime is very adept at hiding the incidence of various 3rd world communicable diseases that one can get in Cuba. He went to the hospital for tourists and Cuban elites and was tossed out when he had no health insurance. He went to the other hospital and picked up an infection because the place was filthy. He left thinking that suffering in a hotel room would be no worse, and further cross infections less likely.
He asked Cubans what they thought of the health system. They had a knowing laugh indicating that if you really expect them to tell the truth you are truly naïve.
Castro sympathizers are taken on tours of the hospitals available to the elites and then return singing praises thinking that the legions of unemployed people trying to hustle a living have access to those facilities.
That along with lack of access to gyms, etc. They're eating a lot of white rice and other processed carbohydrates, which are just basically consuming a lot of sugar with pretty much everything including fiber stripped out.
Well they do get lots of exercise as their only reliable form of "mass transit" are masses of them being transported by their two feet. Buses not easy to find and of course taxis are out of the question.
Sure there's mass transit:, guaguas, camiones, boteros, ciclos, taxis, mototaxis, a large part of public transportation is private. Taxis are not out of the question as there are boteros or shared taxis that charge in national currency.
That along with lack of access to gyms, etc. They're eating a lot of white rice and other processed carbohydrates, which are just basically consuming a lot of sugar with pretty much everything including fiber stripped out.
There are gyms all around, but centered on weight lifting- There are also private gyms and spas, at least in Havana.
This is why Canada doesn't allow doctors to treat patients independently of the system, unlike the US, which has doctors and entire hospitals that don't accept insurance, and take cash only. It's frowned upon for Canadians to cross the border to get treatment or surgery in the US, but the gov't can't stop them.
In Cuba, "free health" was never free - not even when the USRR shelled 5.000.000.000 dollars a year.
Nomenklatura had -has- their own hospitals, there were private doctors and private small clinics -that never were confiscated- and there were "gifts" and the "grapevine".
So, normal hospitals relied on families for about everything.
Dentists are good, though, very good doctors, but they always needed their "regalito" as their pay is 50 dollars.
Not to mention pharma, in many cases the doctor told their patients to ask for a specific drug to relatives abroad. So there's a joke that says that if you don't have FE - familiares en el exterior - you are dead.
Communists built many rural clinics, now deserted -policlinicos - but most large hospitals in Havana are from the decadent era.
FWIW, it seems almost every doctor from Latin America is trained in Cuba. For instance, I had a primary care doctor from Bolivia who was trained in Cuba. I would say generally education and healthcare are two things they've done right there, relatively speaking. Of course the underlying problem is that it is a totalitarian state with an economic system that time and time again has been proven not to be sustainable. And they've done a poor job of transitioning to a market economy like China. The government there cares more about remaining in power and maintaining its ideology rather than actually improving the country and the lives of its average citizens.
The nations of Rwanda and Bangladesh both have universal health care, believe it or not. (Google it for more details).
And yet I don't think any one would argue that this is evidence that the average person has access to quality care.
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