General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Who Wants To Cut Their Healthcare Costs By 20% Instantly [View all]EX500rider
(12,130 posts)When rich people around the world want the best care they go to the US and the Mayo Clinic etc..
They don't go to Cuba etc who has widely available but low quality medical care.
Before the Cuba fans jump on me:
Problems within Cuba's health system, including:
Low pay of doctors.
Poor facilitiesbuildings in poor state of repair and mostly outdated.
Poor provision of equipment.
Frequent absence of essential drugs.
Concern regarding freedom of choice both for patient and doctor.
Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropology professor at the University of Oklahoma, did her Ph.D. thesis on the Cuban health system, spending nine months conducting ethnographic work in Cuba in the late 1990s. According to Hirschfeld, "public criticism of the government is a crime in Cuba", which means that "formally eliciting critical narratives about health care would be viewed as a criminal act both for me as a researcher, and for people who spoke openly with me".[79] Nevertheless, she was able to hear from many Cubans, including health professionals, "serious complaints about the intrusion of politics into medical treatment and health care decision-making".[79] She points out that "there is no right to privacy in the physician-patient relationship in Cuba, no patients right of informed consent, no right to refuse treatment, and no right to protest or sue for malpractice".[79] In her view medical care in Cuba can be dehumanizing.
Hirschfeld explains also that the Cuban Ministry of Health (MINSAP) sets statistical targets that are viewed as production quotas. The most guarded is infant mortality rate. To illustrate this, Hirschfeld describes a case where a doctor said that if the ultrasound examination revealed "some fetal abnormalities", the woman "would have an abortion", to avoid an increase in the infant mortality rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba#Criticism