Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: Opinion
Editor,
I read in the Daily Lobo on Friday about the sad, unequivocal support to
the continued slavery and exploitation of the Cuban people.
The belief that universal health care works for the Cuban people is
founded on the lies of the Cuban government. Where do life expectancy
and infant mortality statistics come from? The Cuban government itself.
I know because I have seen it firsthand.
When I was in Cuba, a guide from the Cuban government personally
escorted me. He was one of the country's top air force pilots and
thought to be loyal to the Cuban dictatorship. He was told not to take
me to different areas and only to particular hospitals, such as those in
Havana. Just look at how Fidel Castro himself went to Europe when he
needed desperate medical attention.
In the early 1990s, there was an outbreak of dengue fever. Countless
people suffered, and who knows how many people died? Why did we not hear
a word about it? Because the Cuban government denies any such thing, and
the U.N. gets its information and statistics from the lying socialist
dictatorship.
Indeed, Cuba lacks any specialized medicine. It's all basic, virtually
what can be learned via the Web and American books and journals. Cuba
would never survive if it wasn't for capitalist medicine. If you choose
to believe these lies, you support the destruction of men. I hope that
these students are willing to find the truth about social medicine in
Cuba as I was.
In medicine, as in other fields, the socialists must turn to the
capitalists for help. American medicine has been the envy of the world
because at its heart stands the independent doctor, left free to think
and act by the standard of his own rational self-interest.
But freedom is now under attack. Capitalist doctors are being replaced
by medical bureaucrats, and medical care in America is slowly vanishing.
When Medicare and Medicaid subsidies were initiated in the 1960s, it was
claimed that doctors would retain their freedom. But when the government
foots the bill, it first inflates costs, then realizes it must control
the spending of the public's money. In order to cap skyrocketing costs,
the government now herds doctors and patients into health maintenance
organizations where care is rationed. Doctors are under gag orders not
to alert patients to alternative, life-saving but costly procedures.
Medical specialization is declining. Tragically, the results of this
socialization of medicine are now blamed on private doctors and the
profit motive.
Even as it deteriorates, American medical care is being made compulsory.
The Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, for instance, imposes fines and prison terms
on doctors who fail to comply with regulations governing subsidized
tests and treatments. Many conscientious doctors are quitting.
I hope all students and voters will take a good hard look at the cries
for universal health care being espoused by our presidential nominees.
They should also take notice to where their socialized advocates, for
example Michael Moore, go to receive their health care - right here in
the U.S.
Mark D. Erasmus
Daily Lobo reader
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