I've had the opportunity to speak with Cuban doctors in Nicaragua in an uncontrolled setting, so I know the Health Care system may be less than the "miracle" referred to in the linked article.

Still, it's far and away better than what's available in most countries of the Third World.

This is an interesting article about Cuba's export of the system. Good for them, I say.

Jeff House wrote:

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Much of Cuba's political system has zero attraction for me, but it's healthcare system does deserve praise.
I've had the opportunity to speak with Cuban doctors in Nicaragua in an uncontrolled setting, so I know the Health Care system may be less than the "miracle" referred to in the linked article.

Still, it's far and away better than what's available in most countries of the Third World.

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This is true, and although it's obviously not a "miracle" (what is?), it is also much better than the that the oppressive, inefficient private for-profit system in the US, which is a great big fat black eye for US apologists and private health care system hucksters.

Looking through the World Health Organization's Health Systems Assessment in 2000, it shows Cuba has better service, lower infant mortality, far more accessible medicines and many treatments than in the US. Then of course, Cubans have to worry a bit less about this: gouging the US patient.

It’s great to hit these right-wingers with these facts and watch them squirm, insult, lie and deflect in response.

One argument the more intelligent (to the extent they have any) ones offer is that doctors and nurses aren’t paid as well in Cuba as they are in the US. While I don’t have any stats here on Cuba’s medical pay scales, I have read that while US doctors, especially specialists, connected directly with HMOs or private hospital chains and insurance firms make almost twice as much as doctors in general in Canada, many independent family physicians are paid quite poorly. given the huge differences in cost of living between the US and Cuba, I'm sure there's some mitigating factors.

In fact, it seems to me, the health care system in Cuba rivals the one here in Canada, especially after 20+ year of cuts and contracting out.

So the question is why can Cuba, an almost Third-World like country with a relatively tiny economy, provide a far better health care system than the biggest meanest “superpower” (that’s a laugh) on Earth?

The answer is fairly Straight-forward:

Corporate Insurance Lobby Influence over Congress

The Pharmaceutical Industry

Report: US citizens pay more for health care and get less (than just about everybody else)

NAFTA's Bitter Pill

Even Costa Rica and Sri Lanka get a better deal than US

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Changes to social relations, addressing the urban/rural contradictions, etc., and not just new technology or techniques make this look interesting.

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I found it interesting that Jesse Ventura led a contingent of Minnesota farmers to Cuba who are interested in organic farming methods.

The Cubans have co-operative farms, and individuals working as field hands are able to share in the profits after state quotas are achieved. The Cubans are now able to sell their produce abroad. David Suzuki said recently that Cuban farmworkers fare better on average than agricultural workers in Canada wrt marketing boards taking the lion's share of farmers profits.

China's state collectives still employ over ten million workers, and they've realized a market for naturally grown produce in Japan.

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It sure beats the hell out of compulsory or forced collectivisation as in the Soviet model.

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Why did the Russians collectivize, N.B.?. And what model for agricultural success did they have to refer to at the time?.

Why were there state-run and private collectives in California and other U.S. states during the 1930's ?. If I recall from reading, Ernest Manning promised financial aid to Alberta farmers then, too. It didn't happen.

And I think Cuba's export of socialized medicine and literacy to struggling third world capitalist countries a total miracle when I realize how short of medical equipment they are and things that just aren't manufactured in Cuba. The tropical and other vaccines developed and synthesized in Cuba are a priceless necessity for many children around Latin America who have never seen a doctor in their lives.

Cuban and Libyan aid workers are fanned out across the poorest of poor nations in Africa and providing human touch for people who are forgotten and condemned to die by AIDS, by malnutrition and by a merciless ideology. Medical workers are so badly needed in Africa that Cuba has created medical schools in the heart of the continent for training new doctors and nurses. This is significant when we realize that Canada, a huge country with unparalleled natural resources and profits leaving the country every day, is short of family physicians to the tune of 500 per year. Our doctor shortage, and the UN continually chiding us for our "stubbornly" high child poverty rates after 20 years, is a national disgrace.

[ 12 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Fidel: Why did the Russians collectivize, N.B.?. And what model for agricultural success did they have to refer to at the time?.

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The second question is easier. They didn't have any models to speak of. That explains, partly, why they made such a horrible mess of things. It didn't help that they had a meglomaniacal leader in Stalin, who developed the most revolting cult of personality around himself and killed off all the old Bosheviks.

Near as I can evaluate it, they collectivised because they didn't want to provide a social base for the restoration of capitalism. Perhaps it might be better to express it as wanting to prevent the consolidation of capitalism in agriculture. In any case, isolated by the capitalist world, bled dry by civil war and external invasion, expecting a final capitalist invasion as inevitable, the Soviet regime (under Stalin - Lenin was dead by this point) proceeded to a kind of "primitive accumulation" as merciless as any practiced by the capitalist countries in a comparable stage of development. They used any accumulation of surplus as a way to finance the rapid urban industrialization of the country.

The whole thing was build on the backs of farmers. Class warfare in the countryside, completely out of whack with their level of technological and economic development, Stalinist atrocities of the worst kind, mass starvation, insane punishment of ordinary people, famine natural and artificial, nationalist resentment and settling of scores, may have destroyed the development of a capitalist class in agriculture but it also set back agriculture in general back by years. Ukrainians to this day commemorate the loss of life in the famine.

I still have a difficult time evaluating some of the claims simply because many of them were made by the Hearst (Nazi) press that used photos from the Volga famine in 1921 as evidence of the famine in the 1930's, etc. But the loss of life was in the millions and real innovative socialist agriculture, possibly with a capitalist minority role, was strangled in the cradle. The Soviet failure in agriculture affected all of the subsequent socialist-oriented countries, many of whom repeated, sheep-like, the same horrific mistakes.

The intellectual repression have its effects even in areas like Soviet genetics and related fields. Agricultural research, presumably with a friendly government, fell prey to moronic witch-hunts of "bourgeois" deviationists, etc., and set back the country by decades.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

In any case, isolated by the capitalist world, bled dry by civil war and external invasion, expecting a final capitalist invasion as inevitable, the Soviet regime (under Stalin - Lenin was dead by this point) proceeded to a kind of "primitive accumulation" as merciless as any practiced by the capitalist countries in a comparable stage of development. They used any accumulation of surplus as a way to finance the rapid urban industrialization of the country.

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Marx described the reason for primitive accumulation, and that was to privatize the means of production so that owners could profit from the surplus labour of peasants who would have no other means of support but their labour. I think that situation came very close to existing for the Soviet's intended purposes to expand industrially. From what I can tell from reading, Lenin's NEP failed because capitalist conditions resulted in the agricultural base. About 80 percent of the peasants had plots of land but no tractors and dependent on just their backs to work land. Most became day labourers for the kulaks, and who treat them badly, including child labourers, in striving toward primitive accumulation of their own. As Lenin's Commissar of multi-cultural affairs, Stalin believed that Russia could not allow the satellite countries to become independent without Russia suffering in terms of agriculture. About ten percent of Russia was actually arable enough to grow food during short growing seasons. Ukraine would be Russia's breadbasket then as it was under the Tzars.

And, of course, Stalin began deprivatizations of farming before the end of the decade and declared war on the kulaks who were hoarding grain and even sabotaging what precious farm equipment and tractors were allocated to Stalin's collectives. Soldiers arrived and were met with gunfire. The kulaks were crushed, murdered and many deported to Siberia and the far East. Joseph Goebbels wrote about how Stalin was liquidating the middle class in his country and would eventually liquidate the middle class across Europe at some point. Meanwhile, Hitler was breaking with the treaty of Versaille and re-arming Germany with the aid of industrialists from as far away as America. Stalin predicted that Hitler would eventually threaten the revolution and was entirely accurate in all his paranoia about another attack. More steel production was Stalin's answer for farm equipment, but mainly for weapons and the manufacturing equipment to produce them. Western leaders did not believe that Russia could mount any defences against Hitler and therefore would not be a useful ally in the coming war. Roosevelt and Churchill fully believed the Nazis would occupy the Kremlin in about six weeks time from the start of barbarossa.

ETA: One of Hitler's grave mistakes was to order an expansion of his own military, something his own advisors and generals balked at. The Panzer divisions were most successful in concentrated numbers and attacking in spear-headed punch. The Nazis themselves were completely surprised by the number of tanks and artillery produced by the Russians, especially after marauding into the heart of Russia virtually unapposed until a few dozen miles from Moscow and the Volga at Stalingrad. The Panzer divisions were watered down with lesser tanks against field commander's advice. Running out of gasoline would be another problem. It's a good thing that Hitler ignored theadvice of battle-hardened field commanders to air drop everything they had left behind the Russian front, behind scorched earth and catching the Russians in disarray. Some say things might have turned out differently. Thankfully it didn't. "Steel!"

So could exporting socialized medicine be a modern alternative to exporting weapons and war ?. Not unless capitalists can attain anywhere from 12 to 300 percent and more on profit margins associated with the arms industry. I think Cuba should be compensated in some way for their efforts through WTO/IMF counries. There must be a way to make supporting life more profitable than war. Should we get rid of banks and the monetary system, and replace it all with barter, and societies based on equality and human rights ?. Would people be inspired to become doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers and plumbers without receiving big paycheques ?. Who would want to help other people just for the sake of a few meagre rewards, like an apartment, enough food and working toward a common good ?.

[ 13 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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In any case, isolated by the capitalist world, bled dry by civil war and external invasion, expecting a final capitalist invasion as inevitable, the Soviet regime (under Stalin - Lenin was dead by this point) proceeded to a kind of "primitive accumulation" as merciless as any practiced by the capitalist countries in a comparable stage of development. They used any accumulation of surplus as a way to finance the rapid urban industrialization of the country.

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You got it pretty much spot on, Beltov. This type of accumulation is exactly what the Lenin and the first Bolshevik administration had prescribed in accordance with its transitional state capitalism plan, and it pretty much resembles any other form of capitalist primitive accumulation, as Marx and Engels and other economists noted before (and we all know that both of them, like many others, recognized corporate state ownership as largely being an extension of private ownership).

In the late 20s, as the new post-revolutionary bureaucratic class was consolidating its base, senior Soviet economic development minister and planner in both the Lenin and Stalin administrations Yevgeni Preobrazhensky fraudulently started calling it "socialist" accumulation, but basically admitting it was standard capitalist accumulation, only by the new corporate class, as did Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister responsible for foreign investment and trade Vyacheslav Molotov (who coined goofy contradictory phrases like “socialist profit,” “socialist competition” and “socialist millionaires” in order to justify the fundamentally capitalistic features of the Soviet economy and the growing power of the post-revolutionary bureaucratic class).
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The Stalin regime basically took the primitive accumulation process to the harshest extreme. Despite all the hype about “socialism in one country,” it’s clear by that regime’s Five Year Plans and business development strategies, its goal had nothing to do with developing a socialist economy and everything to do with catching up to the more developed western nations and turning the Soviet Union into a competitive imperialistic power that could challenge them abroad.

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The whole thing was build on the backs of farmers. Class warfare in the countryside, completely out of whack with their level of technological and economic development, Stalinist atrocities of the worst kind, mass starvation, insane punishment of ordinary people, famine natural and artificial, nationalist resentment and settling of scores, may have destroyed the development of a capitalist class in agriculture but it also set back agriculture in general back by years. Ukrainians to this day commemorate the loss of life in the famine.

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This was exactly the result of the acceleration of capital accumulation by the corporate bureaucracies there to expand the economy—the same type of results that happen everywhere this takes place (although maybe not as extreme).

But it wasn’t just built on the backs of farmers, but on industrial workers as well, as they were forced to work under horrid conditions, denied the right to organize unions (although many did anyway—and many died for doing so) and even denied access to the very products and food they created, since the regime was rationing everything in order to sell them in more profitable markets abroad—a practice that continued right up until the late 1980s and the Soviet collapse.

It’s true, as you also point out, that foreign influence—as in the hostile and violence of the European regimes toward the new Bolshevik regime, including the 1918 invasion, as well as the repeated invasions of Russia over the pervious century (and the fact that, especially in the 1930s, the appearance the whole continent was gearing up for war again)—played a huge role in the shaping of the Soviet economy and its capitalistic features.

Lenin himself at the time of the 1917 revolution accepted that a socialist economy could never develop in Russia on its own (hence the state capitalist model being developed), and was counting on ultimately workers’ revolutions, or at least social democratic majority electoral victories in other more developed European countries. Obviously, neither was successful and the transitional model became permanent. (Ironically, it was many US –based banks and capitalists that began trading with and investing in the Soviet economy in the 1920s and expanded this in the 1930s that helped it overcome the hostility of the surrounding nations).

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
This was exactly the result of the acceleration of capital accumulation by the corporate bureaucracies there to expand the economy—the same type of results that happen everywhere this takes place (although maybe not as extreme).

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That's the kind of baloney that lends to your incredibility, "corporate bureaucracies." Corporations in the west have limited liability legal protections, private shareholders, private property protections paid for by the state and so on. Wall Street and the banking cabal didn't exist in the Soviet Union. That's why the fascists planned and fought Nazi war of annihilation against communism in Russia.

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That’s why those corporate apologists (US state department, Chicago Business school, Conservatives, Republicans, Neo-Cons, etc.) who try to smear socialist economics as a failure are in fact denying that it is their own brutal beloved trickle-down/wealth accumulating elitist economics that dominated the Soviet economy and created Stalinism.

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You have a very large blind spot for fascist aggression against the revolution. Had the Soviets not industrialised, they would have been overrun by fascists, and Russia and Eastern Europe would have become lebensraum.

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem Henry Ford Sr.

IBM and the Holocaust

Banking on the Nazis

The Hitler Project

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The 1942 U.S. government investigative report said that Bush's Nazi-front bank was an interlocking concern with the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel Works Corporation or German Steel Trust) led by Fritz Thyssen and his two brothers. After the war, Congressional investigators probed the Thyssen interests, Union Banking Corp. and related Nazi units. The investigation showed that the Vereinigte Stahlwerke had produced the following approximate proportions of total German national output:

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• 50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
• 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
• 36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
• 38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
• 45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
• 22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
• 35.0% of Nazi Germany's explosives

And wealthy railroad owners received contracts for tourist class passenger tickets in blocks of 500 to transport a certain ethnic group from all over Europe to slave labour and death camps. The slave labour capitalists did not intend to build consumer goods or farm tractors, if you can imagine. In a terrible irony, the state-capitalist bureaucrats allowed kapitalists themselves to demand passengers pay for round trip tickets and with full understanding of their eventual destinations.

Fascists then weren't worried about agricultural or industrial output at all with plundering the occupied countries. Because the GM and Ford trucks they drove all over Europe, as well as the railways, were used carry booty and food back to fascism central.

I'm sorry to have to explain to you the true nature of state-capitalism of that time, but it was very real and very much a threat to democracy everywhere in the 1930's and 40's.

[ 13 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Yeah, shall we get back on topic, folks?

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If your friends all started a communist revolution, would you do it too???

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Yeah, shall we get back on topic, folks?

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Ya, the Cubans are exporting state-kapitalism, nsuh! I mean socialized medicine. Darn!

Moore fearful of hardliner's crackdown

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Filmmaker Michael Moore has stashed a copy of his latest documentary in Canada because he fears the U.S. government will try to confiscate it after part of it was filmed during an unauthorized trip to Cuba.

The U.S. Treasury Department is investigating Moore's trip to communist Cuba in March to film part of his documentary, SiCKO which takes a swipe at the U.S. health-care system and is due to be released in U.S. theaters on June 29. ...

Ha! Get this part:

Moore said that he took them(9-11 ground zero workers who are now ill) by boat to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, where Washington is holding foreign terrorism suspects, to see if they could get the same free health coverage as the detainees.

After they were refused, he said they decided to see what kind of health care they could get in Cuba.

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[ 13 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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I was listening to an interview on public radio the other day about medical care in Cuba. There are a couple of hospitals that are very, very good but the use is largely limited to party muckety-mucks.

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I believe that was the same interview I heard. they are not only reserved for party muckety-mucks, but also corporate hacks and bosses in state owned firms, foreign dignitaries and capitalists and other rich upper crust untouchables--both Cuban and foreign.

They may not export much state capitalism, but they sure foster it well at home.

Having said this, however, credit must be given where it's due. I too have heard complaints about dental care in Cuba--that the quality is lacking in many respects.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
But the fact that this tin pot government with almost a Third World like economy in many respects can set up public health insurance that can guarantee that its citizens can at least get some assured dental coverage--whereas right next door the biggest "superpower" (that's a laugh) in the world can't seem to even accomplish this (and its current regime actually thinks existing cooperative plans, like the union ones, are too good) is really an outrage.

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But there is another factor.

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U.S. manufacturers controlled roughly half of the international market for dental equipment and supplies.

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That's direct control. Who knows how much influence the US exerts indirectly? Anyway, why is this important? Because the US has applied a trade embargo against Cuba for over 40 years. That's bound to have an effect on the development of high-tech dentistry in Cuba. I'm sure your nephew probably would like the latest gadgets and tools from the USA. But it may be outside the ability of Cuban dentists to get those supplies. Which is probably why the dentist inquired about supplies, eh?

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
I'm sure your nephew probably would like the latest gadgets and tools from the USA. But it may be outside the ability of Cuban dentists to get those supplies. Which is probably why the dentist inquired about supplies, eh?[/URL]

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Sven: Why can't Cubans get the equipment from Canada, or Europe, or Asia?

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

U.S. law punishes firms that trade with Cuba ...whether they're US firms or not. It's an extra-territorial application of US law - I think it is done through the punishment of US firms that have subsidiaries in other countries, or vice versa, or trade with firms that trade with Cuba, etc. It's all very Machiavellian and spiteful.

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Cuba has a system of free healthcare, that is relatively advanced by developing country standards, and also a biotechnology and medical equipment industry that produces unique products developed in Cuba. According to government estimates, pharmaceutical and medical equipment production accounted for 1.2 percent of GDP in 1998, and export revenues exceeded US $120 million. This includes more than 200 products derived from the sugar industry. Prior to the financial crisis spawned by the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cuba produced more than three-quarters of its own pharmaceutical consumption. But there have been shortages of many medicines, and the government has opted to import many of these products. Cuba is an important producer of interferons and vaccines and has developed a number of advanced biotechnology processes for medical diagnosis and therapy. The country also produces electronic medical equipment.

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However, ...

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Joint ventures are not allowed to provide healthcare to the Cuban population.

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Furthermore, if the Cubans want to buy supplies from outside, there are some constraints worth mentioning...

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The shortage of hard currency has reduced import expenditures since 1990. This has affected both the availability of medical supplies and the efficacy of the medical system. Nonetheless, healthcare remains as one of the government's top priorities. Recent large-scale purchases by the Ministerio de Salud Pública (MINSAP), Ministry of Public Health, seem to indicate that the sector will become revitalized as more hard currency becomes available.

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Cuba: A Guide for Canadian Businesses - Foreign Affairs

Supplemental: regards your question: if the dental supplies come from the US, then I suspect that the Americans might find a way to interfere with their shipment. The US is, after all, a large obstacle in between Canada and Cuba. To be perfectly secure, you'd probably have to produce some of the supplies in your own plant. That's a rather large undertaking.

[ 13 June 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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But, there is nothing stopping you from setting up a company, purchasing dental equipment and selling it to Cuban dentists.

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That's true but then you will never be able to: sell any product to the US, purchase any US materials / technologies to manufacture your products and you and your family will probably be banned for life from travelling to the US.

If you want to be a capitalist and live with those restrictions fill your boots. With the notable exception of Sherritt and a few others there aren't too many capitalists out there who would take the risk and go through experiences like this:

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Q. When was your last trip to the U.S.?

A. I haven't been since the imposition of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996. So the last time I went was in 1996 to California.

Q. How do you feel about that?

A. I don't miss it at all. I think it's highly personally offensive. I think it's extra territorial in only a way that the U.S. in its arrogance can dream up. It's nonsensical and if you talk to most reasonable people in the U.S. they would agree. There's just no political constituency that has any upside for fighting this fight. It's extremely unreasonable legislation.

Q. Who does it affect besides yourself?

A. It applies to our officers and directors and their spouses and minor children. Let me tell you that my wife is not an inconsequential person and she's wildly offended because in most jurisdictions she considers this to be discriminatory and anti-feminist in the most profound of ways. She has nothing to do with my company.

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IAN DELANEY INTERVIEW

Let's say you still want to choose Cuba over the US, now try getting financing from a capitalist bank that's prepared to make the same choice as you. Good luck!

[ 13 June 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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And, just to beat Fidel to the punch: Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the USA.

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Hey funny-bones. If you want a serious discussion about this, then quit trying to class me as an apologist. I go by fact and economic history.

And BTW, it's a fact that Cuba does have a lower infant mortality rate than the US--not much lower, but lower. Then again, given what the US health care system is like, that may not be saying much either.

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That is likely true regarding US subsidiaries in foreign countries. But, there is nothing stopping you from setting up a company, purchasing dental equipment and selling it to Cuban dentists.

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This, with due respect, is also dumb white wash statement. I don't know Beltov's financial situation or connections. He may well be a tycoon, for all we know.

But if he's a working class Canadian, there's a whole lot stopping him from doing what you suggest--everything from inability to secure financing; overcome the huge restrictive licensing and insurance requirements set up by the government at the insistence of both various corporate lobbies in that industry and the investment houses that put capital into them; lack of funds to secure contacts and access trade agencies and expert consultation, etc.

I have business and economics training, and I developed an increased level of hatred for the capitalist system after I became self-employed.

Starting up the type of enterprise you suggest is sadly largely out of reach for most working class people.

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Why can't Cubans get the equipment from Canada, or Europe, or Asia?

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Beltov is correct in pointing to the vicious and outright vile US punitive trade bill (Helms-Burton Act) against foreign firms doing business in Cuba from doing business in the US as well as a problem because it tries to create a chill factor across the globe.

However, it's also true that Cuba always has done a lot of trade and investment business with Europe, and continues to do so today, as the EU is defying the US bill (besides, large numbers of European firms don’t do business in the US anyway, so the Helms-Burton atrocity doesn’t affect them). So the effectiveness of the Act is not as wide-spread as the Republicanazis had hoped.

In addition, it seems some US corporate bosses have been successful in getting sections of that law relaxed. Amazing what corporate funding of politicians can accomplish.

The main problems are that Cuba has a relatively small and still predominantly capitalist economy, so it suffers many of the same restrictions as any small economy with a corporate power structure.

First, buying such equipment in large quantity is expensive. Second, the Cuban economy may currently lack the home-grown expertise to service and maintain this equipment—which means that too must be imported and greater expense. Third, it takes time and resources to train and provide and infrastructure for large numbers of dentists and other technicians to use and maintain this equipment. Fourth, Cuban financial institutions may not be ready to finance these developments, as they may not be able to recover the outlay, and the government may be concerned about adding further debt to its current load. Fifth, Cuba spends a lot on its military (I suppose having such lovable neighbours should motivate anyone to keep a few extra guns around—makes you wonder why us Canadians don’t get more worried about this). That priority holds up other developments (as it does everywhere, including the US).

These are all reasons why Third World economies are often stuck in the scarcity/deficiency rut they are in.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

And BTW, it's a fact that Cuba does have a lower infant mortality rate than the US--not much lower, but lower. Then again, given what the US health care system is like, that may not be saying much either.

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One percentage point drop or rise in IM is considered significant to health professionals and UN monitoring agencies.

Cuba's IM is about the same on average compared with the U.S., but Harvard School of Public Health has suggested, surprisingly, that reporting in rural America, inner city ghettos and native reserves may not be all that accurate or reliable. There are towns and villages in the U.S. that have been abandoned by councils and the bourgeois for a lack of money and jobs. Many don't have so much as a public health nurse. A medium sized city in Minnesota has atrocious IM rates among black and native populations and comparable with Canada's Nunavut, which itself has been compared with Kazhakstan as far as IM rates go. And we just won't mention the netherworld of the Ozarks, New Orleans or backwaters of Kentucky or the rest of what have been described as third world conditions in America's Heartland.

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The main problems are that Cuba has a relatively small and still predominantly capitalist economy, so it suffers many of the same restrictions as any small economy with a corporate power structure.

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Cuba's problems are the same as would exist for any small island economy of any ideological stripe: resources. Singapore is a highly competitive economy(ranking in the top ten) with one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, and the Asian tiger economy relies heavily on trade with mainland China and the world in general. Helms-Burton certainly hasn't helped over the years. The Cason-CIA affair in Havana didn't help Cuba's trade relations with the EU. Osvaldo Paya was awarded the Sakarov Human Rights Prize by the Europeans for his involvement with "Project Varela."

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Third, it takes time and resources to train and provide and infrastructure for large numbers of dentists and other technicians to use and maintain this equipment.

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According to what I've just read, there were 17 million visits to dentists in Cuba in 1996. And according to the Canadian Dental Association

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Canada is one of the few countries in the Americas that does not have a Chief Dental Officer, a National Oral Health Strategy or up-to-date information on the oral health status of its citizens.

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Poor Moses Han. Poor Canada.

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Fifth, Cuba spends a lot on its military

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According to this, Cuba ranks 59th in the world for spending on military, less than the notoriously repressive national security states: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and Romania.The Cubans are prepared to defend their country from another Bay of Pigs landing at any time.

[ 14 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Sven:
I can get more details from Erick if someone is interested but from the sounds of it, Cubans get the barest minimum of basic dental care and that's about it.

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I've travelled through the States and seen some pretty bad teeth, Sven. But this one takes the coconut, and it happened in Toronto, Ontario!

Cuba Receives Huge Support at Human Rights Council

[ 15 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Social Services under Castro www.globalresearch.ca

In delivering essential social services to the Cuban people, the Castro government has had its most notable and admirable successes. Its through them that the Castro revolution became firmly institutionalized in the hearts and minds of the great majority of the people who never before had a government providing for their essential needs they'll now never relinquish without a fight. Why should they. Article 50 of the Cuban Constitution adopted in 1976 and approved by 97% of the country's eligible voters at the time mandates that all Cubans are entitled to receive free medical, hospital and dental care including prophylactic services. The Constitution emphasizes public health, preventive care, health education, programs for periodic medical examinations, immunizations and other preventive measures. It guarantees that all Cubans will have their health protected, and in Article 43 it stipulates that all citizens have the same rights without regard to "color of skin, gender, religious belief, national origin and any distinction harmful to the dignity of man."

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According to the 2004 Congress Report on US and Foreign Military Spending Comparatives, Cuba actually rated number 77--much lower than the 59 position given it by the Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation.

However, in terms of how much that spending takes out of the country’s economy, Cuba invests about 3.9 per cent of its annual GDP on its military. That’s a higher portion of GDP than seven of the top ten military-spending nations in the world.

The US is the top gross military spending nation on earth, with 3.3 per cent of its GDP going there, followed by China at 4.1 per cent, Japan at 1.1 per cent,

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Rank Total Billions (US) GDP %
United States 1 348,500 3.3
China – Mainland 2 51,000 4.1
Japan 3 39,500 1.0
France 4 40,200 2.5
United Kingdom 5 37,300 2.4
Russia 6 50,800 4.8
Germany 7 33,300 1.5
Italy 8 25,600 1.9
Saudi Arabia 9 22,200 12.0

Cuba 77 1,100 3.9

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