JEANNIE ELLIS: Maybe Australia should take a leaf out of the Cuban healthcare system’s book where they have something like $20,000 less per capita and they have exactly the same healthcare indicators as Australia. I’ve lived in Cuba for a long time and I can tell you that they run a very, very good healthcare system and they get a lot of bang for their buck over there.
That’s from the ABC. To be fair, I can’t comment on the ‘bang for buck’ aspect of her statement because I don’t know how much the Cuban government spends on health. On a bang for buck basis maybe they are just as good as Queanbeyan hospital. But on just a bang basis Cuba is just not the answer to any question that doesn’t involve cigars. Chris Berg at the IPA put together a great graphic (the Hey site will update sometime during the day).
WHO data here.
Maybe mortality is higher in Cuba due to those tasty cigars.
TerjeP (say tay-a)
19 Mar 10 at 5:25 am
Perhaps Jeannie Ellis never worked at this psychiatric hospital in Castro’s Cuba:
http://www.therealcuba.com/mazorra1.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/mazorra3.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/Mazorra2.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/mazorra1.jpg
Perhaps she never worked at this hospital either.
http://www.therealcuba.com/BEDATMARINAAZCUY1.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/MARINAZCUYMANWITHINJUREDFOOT.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/MARINAAZCUY0707R.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/Foto_extraterrestre_2R.jpg
http://www.therealcuba.com/Foto_extraterrestre_4R.jpg
Perhaps Jeannie never saw the recent developments made in emergency ambulance provision there either
http://www.therealcuba.com/Noambulancia.JPG
Perhaps she’s just a stupid freaking moron.
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
JC
19 Mar 10 at 9:18 am
one of the graphs is wrong
Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop
19 Mar 10 at 9:24 am
Which one Homes?
Is it the adult mortality rate comparison sourced from The WHO, or is it that Maternity mortality one also sourced from The Who?
Don’t leave us in suspense, Homes.
JC
19 Mar 10 at 9:29 am
Of course if you look at those Adult mortality figures cuba is doing better than US health system.
Cuba 102, US 108, AU 63
For the maternal mortality figures, I can’t find them in the WHO data link you provided and seem to be differnet the the WHO figure here where it would be 33 Cuba and 6 Australia and 14 for the USA. Seems to be a big variation if it just different year data. Still not too flash for Cuba. It appears to be a good place for babies to be born (same mortality as the US), but not for the Mums
Also of interest from your link the % of GDP spend on health figures.
Cuba 7.7
AU 8.7
US 15.3
All in all I think all we can say it. Go Medicare!
Steve Edney
19 Mar 10 at 9:29 am
Steve,
seem to be differnet the the WHO figure here where it would be 33 Cuba and 6 Australia and 14 for the USA.
.
That’s still a comparable effect to the graph shown above. In other words, Cuba performs poorly on those numbers as well.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 9:36 am
Steve:
I don’t think the mortality figures with the US is comparable or really shows the true pic.
Walking into a US emergency room may be a little different that here. Perhaps the difference is walking in with a headache or getting crated in as a result of gun shot wounds can have a little effect on the mortality rates.
Also around 4% of the US figure as a % of GDP is the higher GDP expense of Pharma research.
JC
19 Mar 10 at 9:37 am
“That’s still a comparable effect to the graph shown above. In other words, Cuba performs poorly on those numbers as well.”
Yes as I said. “Not to flash for Cuba”
Steve Edney
19 Mar 10 at 9:44 am
Yes JC, I do realise there may be other factors other than quality of health care which effect mortality.
However the fact that Mum’s are more than twice as likely to die in the US and in Aus however is somewhat of a concern.
Would be interesting to see these figures conditional on family income (eg top Quartile, vs bottom Quartile). I would expect the US would do slightly better in the top couple of Quartiles but much worse in the lower ones.
Steve Edney
19 Mar 10 at 9:58 am
Cuba had a great health system when the Soviet Union fully funded it to show how communism outperformed the might US. Of course no-one ever mentioned the fact the quid pro quo was Cuba providing troops to countries or groups friendly to the soviets in Africa.
come the break up of the Soviet Union and no more money for health Cuba had been flying south in the figures since.
This was exacerbated by the fact that skilled medical personnel left in droves when their previous perks dried up and waiters etc earned better money in hotels from Westerners.
The Cuban apologists always forget about this and why the trend is going the wrong way for a while.
Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop
19 Mar 10 at 10:03 am
However the fact that Mum’s are more than twice as likely to die in the US and in Aus however is somewhat of a concern.
.
That’s because the US has pockets of extreme poverty in some demographic groups; particularly African-Americans in certain poor urban communities. I can name them if you like:
Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans (although less so since Katrina). Some others as well.
We’ve got a parallel problem with some rural aboriginal communities, although ours is smaller both in relative and absolute terms.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 10:05 am
Homer is making sense again. Keep it up, mate. It’s a breath of fresh air.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 10:06 am
Just yesterday I was reading an article by Humberto Fontova. According to the article, over the last 25 years, the average height of a Cuban has dropped by 8cm and that incidences of babies being born with mishapen heads is increasing. Both a result of poor nutrition.
The same article mentioned the poor treatment of patients in a mental hospital, 40 of whom froze to death in the state’s care. Their bodies were clearly malnourished but also had apparently been beaten. For some grizzly pics:
http://www.penultimosdias.com/2010/03/02/los-muertos-de-mazorra/
Original article from http://www.brookesnews.com/101503cubanhealth.html
I was under the impression there is a significant amount of black market medical services in Cuba.
Tim R
19 Mar 10 at 10:45 am
My understanding is that Homer is right; the Soviets funded Cuban healthcare as a ‘showpiece’ to rather ridiculous levels. Obviously once the USSR disappeared the whole thing went tits up, although to be fair it went tits up slowly, coming as it was from a fairly high base.
skepticlawyer
19 Mar 10 at 11:15 am
I don’t if you can really compare the two situations. We can’t deliver top notch health care to people living 500kms from the nearest town. They can’t deliver it to people in the middle of their largest cities.
Steve Edney
19 Mar 10 at 11:43 am
We can’t deliver top notch health care to people living 500kms from the nearest town. They can’t deliver it to people in the middle of their largest cities.
.
1. First up, basic care is available to everyone in the US, particularly for giving birth, what’s not available is “top notch” care (although I’m not sure what you mean by that term). Basic care is available to those communities in question.
2. This issue has nothing to do with distance and remoteness. That’s a logistic problem that’s unique to Australia. The point is that they face different problems, not “remote communities.”
3. If you “can’t compare the two situations”… then why are we comparing them? Perhaps you can’t compare the Australian and Cuban system either, yet here we are.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 12:03 pm
Do people actually think Americans aren’t able to access hospital care?
JC
19 Mar 10 at 12:05 pm
No JC I think they can access it certainly on an emergency basis.
Now, I’m only going on what I have been told by health care people working here, and have not researched this myself, however they say that our system at a basic level provides much better pre-term care for poor in terms of preventitive things like screening. In the US they have, I’m told, deaths from things like ectopic pregnacies in poor communities, which I believe are incredibly rare here.
Steve Edney
19 Mar 10 at 12:20 pm
Steve:
Below a certain level of income, people there are entitled to (US)Medicare, so I don’t quite understand what level of heath care isn’t available to to them.
Perhaps the people with the biggest problem are those that are on medicare and actually don’t have much of a handle as to what they need to do. There is also the problem with 11 million illegals that aren’t covered by medicare.
JC
19 Mar 10 at 12:27 pm
Steve, I don’t know either but that could be true. It’s quite plausible.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 12:28 pm
I’ve heard stories of women from poor urban communities turning up at hospitals in America, they’re in labor, and it’s the first time they’ve seen a doctor or any health professional about the pregnancy.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 12:30 pm
Do people actually think Americans aren’t able to access hospital care?
.
Yes. People actually think that.
daddy dave
19 Mar 10 at 12:31 pm
Steve:
Ask yourself this……..
Would you trust Homer getting access to decent pre-natal care if he was pregnant or would be bungle it up.
JC
19 Mar 10 at 12:56 pm
Speaking of US health care, I just came across this excellent article on Pajamas Media written by MD and founder of FIRM, Paul Hsieh. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamacare-vs-the-hippocratic-oath/
He highlights how Obamacare would “fatally compromise doctors’ ability to treat their patients according to their best judgment and ability”
Tim R
19 Mar 10 at 1:18 pm
One problem in the US is that the federal government consumes too much resources. Healthcare ought to be a state issue.
TerjeP (say Tay-a)
19 Mar 10 at 2:02 pm
Yep, those Cuban hospitals look pretty world class to me. Isn’t it nice to know that all those non-communist “reactionaries” (including teenage boys) were murdered for a good cause: free healthcare.
Michael Fisk
19 Mar 10 at 4:58 pm