"Sicko" banned in Cuba

Nice find Brandon, very interesting,

That's great. What a lovely, free country they live in. What an example to the United States!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell.

"Communist propaganda" has been banned from viewing inside Cuba? So despite this apparent incoherence, one is to gather that you mean to say it's such bad commie propaganda, that even the cubans view it as unfit for viewing there? But you don't say that. You could just as easily say (if it's truly banned in Cuba) that these dirty commies are as usual banning the truth.

This article is lame and strikes me as propaganda itself. The first paragraph, which is the one quoted in the intro, is nonsensical. How is it that the author is able to claim this

Clearly, Moore's place in history has been cemented as that of a willing puppet of the Cuban dictatorship

While reporting on how the Sicko was baned in the very country he was supposed to be shilling for? Clearly, any literate person should find that problematic.

The obvious conclusion that anyone should come to is that, Cubans would probably be quite upset to be aware that there is better health care available to elites of society. This is not something that their supposed comrades would like to hear.

And that the elites of the elites get foreign care should not be a surprise. We're talking about the health care of an impoverished nation. American Elites often go to Sweden to get obgyn care when they're pregnant, European elites go to Hungary to get premium dental care, and many elites across the world go to America for cardio and cancer care. This is not news.

The point of going to Cuba had nothing to do with Cuba. It had to do with America. The people who went there were people who sacrificed themselves for America and America abandoned them while a poor country that we have oppressed for generations was willing to help them. Whether it was for Cuba's propaganda purposes that they helped those Americans or because they wanted to do a good deed to people who sacrificed themselves does not matter to me one bit. I don't care about an insignificant country's motives. The contrast shows how poorly we look after our own.

Furthermore, anyone who gets all up in arms talking about how much better our health care is than Cuba's has lost touch with any sort of perspective. I'm sure, if some nice scientists did a study, they'd find that our health care is actually better than that of the Ming Dynasty, both in terms of coverage and quality. With Cuba, we're talking about a country that ranks among the poorest of the poor who also live in an authoritarian society. The very fact that they can be compared without laughter itself should be disturbing. It's like people saying, "yeah well, you think our freedoms have been restricted, you should see China's." This line of thinking is ridiculous. If I wanted to live in a country whose freedoms were actually worth comparing to China, I'd move to Cuba or Iran. And this thought actually implies acceptance that the US is no longer a great place to be anymore, but rather, that it is only "better than China," or in the case of this article, Cuba.

The real question Michael Moore was asking with his film is "why couldn't 9/11 rescue workers get care in the U.S.A?"

In spite of crippling trade embargoes and other forms of economic duress, the Cuban health system must be recognized for the scientific breakthroughs that they have made against all obstacles. In a report on the web by a Dr Ralph Alan Dale in the early 1990's, he records his observations:
"9)Still another type of breakthrough has been in biotechnology. Many new vaccines have been developed and are produced both for home consumption and for use abroad. For example, an effective vaccine for meningococcosis, has been developed which at a recent international medical meeting in Mexico, was recognized as the most effective vaccine for meningitis. One institute in Havana is devoted exclusively to the development of monoclonal antibodies for diagnosis, treatment and prevention. An interferon treatment has been discovered that is especially effective against hepatitis. Bioenginerring has created an effective streptokainases enzyme and an epidermal growth factor cream especially useful in the treatment of burns.
A cure has been found for vitiligo, a chronic pigmentary anomaly that modern medicine has held, until now, to be incurable. A new kind of ocular surgery has been developed by Cuban ophthalmologists to treat pigmentary retinosis successfully. Orthopedic apparati of various kinds have been invented and are in use in Cuba as well as exported to other countries.
(10) The high quality of Cuban health care along with the breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of various kinds of illness has led to a new international role for Cuban medicine. Three main types of international contributions are made: (a) The development of international emergency health care. For example, the treatment in Cuba of hundreds of children who were victims of the Chernobyl disaster. (b) The creation of what is called Health Care Tourism, the treatment of patients who come from countries all over the world to receive quality and new method therapeutic or prophylactic care at very inexpensive fees. (c) The sending of Cuban physicians to other countries to help establish a better health care system. For many years Cuban doctors have been going to Third World countries which have needed their assistance desperately. More recently, the industrialized nations have been calling for Cuban advice and assistance. During the most recent visit (October 1992) of Dr. Dale and wife, Hendrina Ophey, Ms. Ophey met with a group of medical administrators from the Netherlands since she is originally from Holland which has one of the best health care systems in Europe. They had come to Cuba to request that several Cuban physicians come to Holland for one or more years to help improve their health care."
Whether Cuban health care has declined since then is possible but unknown. Who knows what the Cuban system could be like now if the US had abandoned its silly and un-Christian embargo.