Skip to main content

More on Castro's Bad Medicine

Earlier, I had written about Honduras keeping the Cuban doctors currently in the country. A.M. Mora y Leon over at Publius Pundit has picked up on the story and brought out more information on this story.

As most have probably read, Cuba is offering to send doctors to New Orleans. A.M. Mora y Leon points us to today’s Investor’s Business Daily that makes an argument against it. Babalu Blog has more on this on the post titled "Playing Doctor."

In Venezuela, for another example, castro's 13,000 "free" doctors have replaced the country's real doctors, as funds are siphoned from public hospitals to castro setups, driving thousands of Venezuelan physicians out of work. Those doctors are protesting in the streets. One news photo showed an angry doctor holding a sign calling castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "Pirates of the Caribbean."

While those doctors minister elsewhere, health care in Cuba is nearly absent. The filthy, dilapidated state of the country's public hospitals is a roach-crawling horror. Impoverished Cubans write their Miami relatives begging for aspirin and bandages, revealing the real state of castro's vaunted health care system.

Part of the problem has been the doctors themselves. castro's commitment to building a team of roving doctors has contributed to a lack of development across the nation, leaving Cuba an economic shell.

castro's record on hurricane cleanup is no better. As he touts Cuba's hurricane preparations, the results seen during Hurricane Dennis this summer told a different story. The scores of dead, the destroyed housing stock and the rebellion in the streets looked quite a bit like the scenes in New Orleans.

Here is more from A.M. Mora y Leon over at Publius Pundit:

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has loudly volunteered the services of 1,600 doctors to New Orleans, making a bet that if the U.S. doen’t take them, it’s his propaganda victory as the U.S. looks heartless on the world stage.

But today’s Investor’s Business Daily makes an argument against it. Castro’s record on medical aid is a bad one. Wherever Castro’s Cuban doctors go, political havoc follows. This isn’t revolution, this is the weakening of political institutions and the damaging of free markets. There are a whole string of incidents from these Cuban “doctors.” It’s happening right now in Honduras and a few weeks ago it happened in Venezuela. And as I wrote in American Thinker here, linking a NYT piece, Paraguay threw 700 of these Cuban doctors out for trying to overthrow the government.

For a profession as pacific and apolitical as medicine, these Castroite Cuban doctors do manage to create an unusual amount of political trouble. They’re the last thing Hurricane-battered New Orleans needs.

Tags: , Politics, , Katrina, New Orleans, flood aid

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Al Cardenas Comments on Univision Democrat Forum

Al Cardenas is Chairman of Romney for President's Hispanic Steering Committee. I got the following email from the campaign. Boston, MA – Al Cardenas, the Chairman of Romney for President's National Hispanic Steering Committee, issued the following statement regarding tonight's Democrat presidential forum on Univision: "Tonight's Univision forum demonstrated once again the consequences that a President Clinton, President Obama or President Edwards would have on the Hispanic community.  Whether it's tax increases for families and the two million Hispanic business owners, socialist-style health care, coddling dictators, opposing free trade with our allies or putting family values last, the Democrat presidential candidates made clear how out of sync their policies are with the best interests of the Hispanic community. Mitt Romney has put in the effort to reach out to this vital bloc, and, after watching tonight's debate
Post a Comment
Read more

Harry Potter Mania -- Discussion

There is a great discussion going on at WorldMagBlog on the whole Harry Potter mania. Nothing to do with Latinos, I suppose, but I thought I would ad my two cents. A reader commented: I think its interesting how much people want to be in a group that is all connected by some common thread. It says a lot about our desire for homogeny, not always along racial, sexual or religious lines, but also simply based on what we do in our spare time. The interesting thing about Harry Potter fans vs. Star Trek fans is that a vast majority of them are kids who have grown up with the books, or the parents of said kids. I wonder if what sort of effects this will have on them as they get older (and whether or not they will remain HP fans). We live in an obsessive culture. Posted by David B. at July 22, 2005 07:54 AM This is an interesting phenomenon. I would think it is indicative of our society, more than anything else. I tend to agree with the idea that it shows a desire or need for communi
Post a Comment
Read more

Communism: Good Money for the "El Viejo"

I guess Fidel Castro is doing ok . Forbes lists Castro as one of the richest in the world, right up there with the Queen of England. I bet he didn't like the attention. It was hard to figure it out, but it seems they managed to throw some numbers together. In the past, we have relied on a percentage of Cuba's gross domestic product to estimate Fidel Castro's fortune. This year we have used more traditional valuation methods, comparing state-owned assets Castro is assumed to control with comparable publicly traded companies. A reasonable discount was then applied to compensate for the obvious disclosure issues.
1 comment
Read more