Cuba Libre

In an early essay on these pages, TheFundamentals displayed a chart displaying health care cost per capita (what it costs for each citizen) and average life span of each citizen.  The chart covered about 30 countries.  See:  http://thefundamentalsus.blogspot.com/2009/09/health-care-costs-in-us-and-other.html

Now, even a passing glance at the chart communicated the following:

·         Cost per capita in the United States was off the chart – double, triple many western, developed countries

·         Lifespan, how long we Americans live, was nowhere near the top, meaning

·         We were not getting anything for all our spending, meaning

·         Others, spending less, and in some cases, much less, were living longer

For us Americans,  this is heresy.  We Americans know money buys anything – matter of fact, it buys everything.  Just turn on your TV – TV is a constant reminder that all one need do is buy, buy, buy and you will be handsome, good looking, beautiful, slim, well dressed, athletic, virile, popular, and, most important, any ailment, any health failing, any disease or injury or boo-boo will be healed.

Okay, back to the chart.

From time to time, we preach the gospel of learning from others – not often, of course, we Americans tend to not believe in this gospel.  We Americans always know best so we tend to do our own thing.  We preach to others.  We don’t learn from others.  You get the idea.

Okay, back to the chart.

The average Cuban lives to be 77.7 years old.

The average American lives to be 77.4 years old.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba

Some more, please –

Infant mortality in Cuba (2012) – 4.83 deaths per 1,000 births

Infant mortality in US of A (2012) – 6.00 deaths per 1,000 births

Source:  ditto

You don’t need to be David Axelrod to see a campaign propaganda pitch possibility  here, do you?  Don’t worry, David won’t touch this one.  BTW, the New England Journal of Medicine took a crack at the Cuban medical phenomenon – if interested go to:  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1215226

In America, we spend about $7,960.00 per American per year for health care.

In Cuba, the Cubans spend about $478.00 per Cuban per year for health care.

Source:  WHO (World Health Organization) www.who.int

Huh?  That’s gotta be a misprint.   Nope.  It’s a fact.

Havana, Cuba is about 300 miles from Miami, Florida.  From Key West, Florida to Cuba is less than 100 miles.  You can get there quickly by boat – even quicker by plane.  Except David’s buddy, Barack, and all Barack’s predecessors for the last 50 years, won’t let us go there.

We’ve been led to believe that the reason we can’t go there is because the south Florida Cuban emigrant lobby is so strong that all those brilliant American leaders were afraid to open up travel to Cuba and risk irritating them or some such nonsense.

We think it has little to do with the Cuban emigrant’s living in south Florida.  We think it has something to do with those who benefit from that  $7,960.00 per person per year health care spending. You know them as hospitals, doctors, nurses, their unions/associations, drug companies, medical equipment supply companies and, of course, lawyers.

Closing comment – one could readily conclude that this essay is about special interest groups and how much they cost us with all their lobbying and added costs that produce no measurable benefits.  And you’d be partially correct.  But, it’s also about propaganda and how the use of propaganda to pitch nonsense even in the face of overwhelming facts and figures works very well in a country that always knows best.

"Control the message – control the media by which the message is delivered – control darn near everything."  DAxelrod to BObama, 2007 - 2017