02-22-2020, 07:34 PM
(02-22-2020, 05:07 PM)Carol1990 Wrote: Americans scream tyranny is wonderful, but Americans are unable to explain why Cubans try to escape even though Cuba has gun control and free medical care.
Cuba has a secret police and rigged elections.
...I cannot understand why people still support Donald Trump, the most dictatorial President we have ever had, but enough do that the 2020 election is no sure thing. Trump holds Casto-style rallies complete with harangues like those that Castro held.
Cuba has free medical care in part because it underpays its physicians. OK, Castro did something right in putting the emphasis on general practitioners instead of specialists (prevention is cheaper than heroic care, and more effective)... and the same secret police that harasses someone who makes a snide joke about the leadership aids physicians in monitoring the behavior of patients. If the physician tells you to stop drinking and you don't, maybe some people from the Comites de las Defesa de la Revolucion will pay you a visit and confiscate your rum and beer. Or if you need more exercise the same police will insist that you do calisthenics. Not taking your pills? The secret police knows. Nothing like that happens in America.
I have a cousin who would be living had he gotten the Cuban medical treatment. The fellow bloated to 480 pounds. He overate... and he had a recipe for macaroni and cheese that included the instructions "add sugar". He died at 48 because of his weight.
You win some and you lose some. We Americans would be better off with something other than our profits-first medical system that imposes the world's highest costs and gets at best mediocre results.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.