Cuba's lauded healthcare system is a hoax
By MYRIAM MARQUEZ
mmarquez@MiamiHerald.com
Teresita died on my birthday almost five years ago. I didn't grow up
with my older cousin -- she stayed behind in Havana after the revolution
and my father, her uncle, was wise enough to leave.
But when I met Teresita and her son and daughter during a monthlong
reporting trip to Cuba in 2002 it was an instant connection. The grainy
black-and-white photos of a beautiful teenage Teresita at my baptism,
with her long black locks and beaming smile, came to life in the color
of five decades of regrets.
What if she had left when my parents started making arrangements to
bring her to Miami, instead of falling in love, at 18, and deciding to
marry and stay? Why did she wait too long to leave during the Mariel
boatlift? Why didn't we keep in touch all those decades?
MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME
After our bittersweet encounter we tried to make up for lost time. I
would send her antacids every month, and money when I could. She
complained about digestive pains a lot, and after I visited her home in
the historic and crumbling section of Havana and saw the filthy cistern
where trucks delivered the water I had a queasy feeling about the
possibilities.
Except I never realized that Teresita's yellowish-brown color might not
be from biking to her accountant's job every day in the hot tropical
sun. She had a liver disease, undiagnosed for years. When she became
severely ill, I was alerted and told to send all kinds of special
prescriptions. I was hunting for the medicine when the call came.
Maria Teresa Marcos had died, as so many Cubans do, because the
communist island's much-lauded healthcare system is an evil hoax.
For years she had been complaining to doctors about her digestive
problems. For years they told her to try to get antacids from family or
friends abroad. No scans were done. No blood tests were taken -- until
her liver was so dysfunctional it became her death sentence.
A transplant? For Fidel, sure. Maybe for a hard-core member of the
Communist Party. But for my cousin, a typical Cuban who lived in a
ramshackle building, where the top floor had crumbled and the water
likely had amoebas, nada. At least she was able to bring new bed sheets
to the hospital -- the ones I had bought her and my cousins.
Teresita became another statistic, collateral damage in a revolution
that promised elections and prosperity and delivered dictatorship and
desperation.
`SICKO' MISSES MARK
That's the real Cuba that lefty propagandist Michael Moore doesn't want
to see. The ``documentary'' filmmaker of Sicko gloated about the lack of
healthcare insurance for millions of Americans by taking American rescue
workers with respiratory problems from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to get
``free'' treatment in Cuba at one of its swank hospitals that serve
tourists.
The film, which was shown at Doral Middle School last week to a social
studies class looking into the healthcare systems of Canada, France and
Cuba, is hardly an educational tool. But perhaps the teacher had that in
mind.
The school system went by the book. Students had to have signed forms
from parents if they did not want to see Sicko, and two decided not to
watch. What irks me is that they are still required to know what's in
the movie. How can they without watching it?
The discussion the class should have is what Sicko didn't show. In
Teresita's memory, please do.
Cuba's lauded healthcare system is a hoax - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com
(4 October 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1265803.html
No comments:
Post a Comment