RIP Fidel Castro
- Thread starter Unclebaldrick
- Start date
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NWPost your address, so we can send help
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Justin-case
Well-Known Member
Sen. Tom Harkin says Cuba has lower child mortality, longer life expectancy than U.S.
By Louis Jacobson on Friday, January 31st, 2014 at 3:29 p.m.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, recently spent three days in Cuba -- the longtime socialist adversary of the United States -- to learn more about the island nation’s health care system.
For years, some health policy specialists in the United States have been intrigued by Cuba’s health care system. Cuba produces a disproportionate number of doctors, and it has posted relatively strong health statistics in international comparisons, especially considering the country’s shortage of material goods and economic wealth.
For some liberals, Cuba’s health care system has offered an alternative to the one in the United States, where millions of Americans have struggled without insurance in recent years. Notably, Michael Moore’s 2007 health care documentary Sickoincludes scenes where Americans in need of medical attention travel to Havana and are treated for free at a high-quality hospital. Critics have countered that such free, quality care is available only to the communist elite, not to ordinary Cubans.
Harkin certainly saw something promising in Cuba’s health care system. During a press conference upon his return to Washington on Jan. 29, 2014, Harkin -- who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee -- said that Cuba is a "poor country, but they have a lower child mortality rate than ours. Their life expectancy is now greater than ours. It's interesting — their public health system is quite remarkable."
We wondered whether these statistics are accurate, and what they say about health care in Cuba.
Child mortality statistics
On child mortality, we found a few data sources that are generally considered credible. According to the CIA Factbook, Cuba infant mortality rate is indeed lower -- an estimated 4.76 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013, compared to 5.90 for the United States.
And more precisely given the phrase Harkin chose, Cuba also has a better child mortality rate -- that is, the likelihood of death under 5 years of age. According to the World Health Organization, Cuba had 6 deaths under age 5 per 1,000 live births between 2005 and 2010, compared to 8 deaths for the United States.
So on child mortality, Harkin had his numbers right.
Life expectancy statistics
The data for life expectancy appears to be mixed. According to both the CIA Factbook, the estimated life expectancy for both sexes in 2013 was 78.62 in the United States, compared to 78.05 years in Cuba. And according to the World Health Organization, life expectancy in 2011 was 79 years in the United States and 78 in Cuba.
By these sources, Harkin would be wrong. But when we contacted Harkin’s office, they pointed us to data from Pan American Health Organization that backed up their claim. For 2012, the group found that life expectancy was 79.2 years in Cuba, compared to 78.8 years in the U.S.
So for life-expectancy numbers, the data is varied, with some supporting Harkin and some not.
How reliable is this data?
We wondered, however, whether the data from Cuba’s authoritarian government could be trusted. As we looked into it, we heard a measure of skepticism.
We did find one area of agreement: Cuba puts a lot of emphasis on its health data. Richard H Streiffer, dean of the College of Community Health Sciences at the University of Alabama, said his conclusion from two visits to Cuba is that Cuban health practitioners are "very compulsive about collecting data and reporting it regularly."
On a recent trip, Streiffer said, he spent time with a family doctor in a neighborhood clinic. "Family doctors are mandated to collect certain data," he said. "He had right on his wall a ‘dashboard’ of data characterizing his practice -- an age/sex distribution; an age/sex distribution of the top 10 chronic diseases in his practice; a map of where his patients lived in the neighborhood. You don't find that in the US."
However, some experts said that this obsession with statistics can be a two-edged sword when it comes to reliability. Some say Cuba is so concerned with its infant mortality and life-expectancy statistics that the government takes heavy-handed actions to protect their international rankings.
"Cuba does have a very low infant mortality rate, but pregnant women are treated with very authoritarian tactics to maintain these favorable statistics," said Tassie Katherine Hirschfeld, the chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma who spent nine months living in Cuba to study the nation's health system. "They are pressured to undergo abortions that they may not want if prenatal screening detects fetal abnormalities. If pregnant women develop complications, they are placed in ‘Casas de Maternidad’ for monitoring, even if they would prefer to be at home. Individual doctors are pressured by their superiors to reach certain statistical targets. If there is a spike in infant mortality in a certain district, doctors may be fired. There is pressure to falsify statistics."
Hirschfeld said she’s "a little skeptical" about the longevity data too, since Cuba has so many risk factors that cause early death in other countries, from unfiltered cigarettes to contaminated water to a meat-heavy diet. In a more benign statistical quirk, Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that the flow of refugees could skew longevity statistics, since those births are recorded but the deaths are not.
Transparency would help give the data more credibility, but the Cuban government doesn’t offer much, experts said.
"I would take all Cuban health statistics with a grain of salt," Hirschfeld said. Organizations like the Pan-American Health Organization "rely on national self-reports for data, and Cuba does not allow independent verification of its health claims."
Rodolfo J. Stusser -- a physician and former adviser to the Cuban Ministry of Public Health's Informatics and Tele-Health Division who left for Miami at age 64 -- is another skeptic. While Stusser acknowledges that Cuba has improved some of its health numbers since the revolution, the post-revolution data has been "overestimated," he said. "The showcasing of infant mortality and life expectancy at birth has been done for ideological reasons," he said.
Freddie Millergogo
Well-Known Member
Most people here are forgetting that Castro and Cuba quarantined anyone with HIV. Do a search and you will see articles by NIH, NY Times and others. Pretty much people were put in quarantine to die.
So please don't start on how Cuba cured HIV.
Justin-case
Well-Known Member
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
You dont seem to understood what he said. If you were found to have HIV you were put into a camp and left to die. I am sure that is not included in the free healthcare cuba is pushing.Just keep eating those big Macs, fatty
People would rather get on anything that floats and risk their lives to try to get to America and yet you still believe the bullshit propaganda and lies told to you because you want to believe them, not because they are logical or sensible.
I get it though. You would certainly have no problem with people that disagreed with you to be silenced, put in camps and otherwise dealt with so Castro is right up your alley...
Scary how programmed kids are these days.
Grandpapy
Well-Known Member
It still is.
Apparently they didn’t see the need to pay CEO’s millions.
Rich in education.
In 2012, Cuba patented the first therapeutic vaccine in the world against advanced lung cancer, called CIMAVAX-EGF. In January 2013, the island announced the second cancer vaccine, known as Racotumomab.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cuba-develops-four-cancer-vaccines-ignored-by-the-media/5390303
You are kidding, right?
There ARE homosexuals in Iran, regardless of their religious doctrine.
The men who just can't keep it packed away..
Whoa.
Who's your daddy, Justin?
9 months before he was born, Margaret & Pierre visited Cuba. Coincidence? Maybe...
Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnn
I'd love to see the DNA on this..Pierre was one ugly mofo and those of us old enough to remember, know about Maggie and her escapades. It wasn't until recently, that I realized his son was in office, took a good look at him, I could see his mother and said to myself thank god he didn't get Pierres genies..
Or maybe you grow a pair and don't.
HazyDays65
Active Member
The first wave he let leave were criminals that were jailed and mental patients. Cream of the crop.
A.K.A. Overgrowem
Well-Known Member
I don't know which wave they were in but Pedro Laza and Mauricio Rodriguez, both Olympians, came over. I knew Rodriguez personally. Cream of the crop.
HazyDays65
Active Member
More good people than bad came but fact is he sent thousands of his problems here to stick it to Carter.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-09-26/news/8502100720_1_mariel-boatlift-criminals
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
I was pointing out the hypocrisy of taking another countries word for their successes.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
If you think that all other people are evil all of the time then there is no solution.
If you accept that most people generally want to do the right thing and provide people with quality goods and services then we can move forward.
Insurance adds expense to medicine without giving direct benefit. Regulation adds expense to medicine, legislation adds expense to medicine. All these things do not add to quality health care.
I've seen a silver certificate..the ink is different if I remember correctly..quite a bit of black.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
should that apply to people too?
like, for example, if a person is a known liar, and they claim to be having massive success in the pool cleaning industry, but then just months later they are broke and begging for loans to go grocery shopping?
