The Myth of Cuban Health Care
The real story of the Cuban Revolution - Andy Garcia directs "The Lost City"
Fred Thompson takes on Michael Moore, Hollywood and the strange infatuation with Fidel Castro. (reprinted by permission)
by Fred Thompson
You might have read the stories about filmmaker Michael Moore taking ailing workers from Ground Zero in Manhattan to Cuba for free medical treatments. According to reports, he filmed the trip for a new movie that bashes America for not having government-provided health care.
Now, I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care. I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore’s talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented. Simply calling his movies documentaries rather than works of fiction, I think, may be the biggest fiction of all.
While this PR stunt has obviously been successful — here I am talking about it — Moore’s a piker compared to Fidel Castro and his regime. Moore just parrots the story they created — one of the most successful public relations coups in history. This is the story of free, high quality Cuban health care.
The truth is that Cuban medical care has never recovered from Castro’s takeover — when the country’s health care ranked among the world’s best. He won the support of the Cuban people by promising to replace Batista’s dictatorship with free elections, and to end corruption. Once in power, though, he made himself dictator and instituted Soviet-style Communism. Cubans not only failed to regain their democratic rights, their economy plunged into centrally planned poverty.
As many as half of Cuba’s doctors fled almost immediately — and defections continue to this day. Castro won’t allow observers in to monitor his nation’s true state, but defectors tell us that many Cubans live with permanent malnutrition and long waits for even basic medical services. Many treatments we take for granted aren’t available at all — except to the Communist elite or foreigners with dollars.
For them, Castro keeps “show” clinics equipped with the best medicines and technologies available. It was almost certainly one of these that Moore went to, if the stories in the NY Post and The Daily News are true.
Nothing about this story inspires doubt, though. Elements in Hollywood have been infatuated with the Cuban commander for years. It always leaves me shaking my head when I read about some big-time actor or director going to Cuba and gushing all over Castro. And, regular as rain, they bring up the health care myth when they come home.
What is it that leads people to value theoretically “free” health care, even when it’s lousy or nonexistent, over a free society that actually delivers health care? You might have to deal with creditors after you go to the emergency ward in America, but no one is denied medical care here. I guarantee even the poorest Americans are getting far better medical services than many Cubans.
According to Forbes magazine, by the way, Castro is now personally worth approximately $900 million. So when he desperately needed medical treatment recently, he could afford to fly a Spanish surgeon, with equipment, on a chartered jet to Cuba. What does that say about free Cuban health care?
The other thing that irks me about Moore and his cohort in Hollywood is their complete lack of sympathy for fellow artists persecuted for opposing the Castro regime. Pro-democracy activists are routinely threatened and imprisoned, but Castro remains a hero to many here. According to human rights organizations, these prisoners of conscience are often beaten and denied medical treatment, sanitation or even adequate nutrition.
If Moore wants a subject for a real documentary, I would suggest looking into the life of Cuban painter and award-winning documentarian Nicol√°s Guill√©n Landri√°n. He was denied the right to practice his art for using the Beatles’ song, “The Fool on the Hill,” as background music behind footage of Castro climbing a mountain. Later, he was given plenty of free Cuban health care when he was confined for years in a “mental institution” and given devastating, repeated electroshock “treatments.”
There are many other artists and activists who have enjoyed similar treatment. I suspect we’ll see movies with sympathetic portrayals of terrorists held in Guantanamo before we ever hear about the torture of true Cuban heroes. Even Andy Garcia’s brilliant fictionalized movie about the real Cuban experience, “The Lost City,” was given the Hollywood silent treatment. My bet, though, is that we’ll hear lots about how Michael Moore showed that Cuba’s socialized medicine is better than ours.
So go ahead and start working on the Oscar speech, Michael.
(copyright ABC)
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27 Comments
1. Manfred Kline:Believing in Fidel is like believing in any religious figure. It requires a true believer full of faith. Not even dynamite can separate such a believer from his object of worship.
The same thing is developing in Venezuela and Bolivia. Irrational religious thinking converted to political power. I doubt that many of the peasants who lifted Chavez or Morales to power had ever been to Cuba to see how the peasants there lived.
May 3, 2007 - 8:50 am 2. David S:Fred- Please, Please, Please run for president. We need you now more than ever.
May 3, 2007 - 8:52 am 3. ic:Hollywood elites are better than thou. They hate to be ignored. We mostly ignore them, and they can’t forgive us for that. The masses may have to cut down energy consumptions to save the planet, the elites are entitled to jet around in their private jets. The masses are only good enough for Castro’s free health care. The elites are entitled to Castro’s Spanish surgeon care. The only way the elites can set themselves above us is to dumb us down to elevate themselves. The only way a talentless Moore can make money is to shock us with lies and propaganda.
May 3, 2007 - 9:40 am 4. How-ToVideos.com:Did a presidential candidate just use the word “artist”? And them go on to talk about an artists work? That is enough to get my vote.
May 3, 2007 - 11:42 am 5. Rob Dejournett:Fred, we are begging you to run for President. That said, you may not be aware that electroshock is actually used in the U.S. to treat psychiatric patients. It may seem barbaric, but it actually works (according to psychologists). I’m not saying this Cuban wasn’t tortured by electricity, but electroshock therapy, properly done, is as safe and effective as many drugs (it’s often used for severe depression).
May 3, 2007 - 12:02 pm 6. DeepForestGreen:A wonderful article, well written and well researched.
If Fred wants help with his election, he needs only to ask. I’m a filmmaker.
May 3, 2007 - 12:19 pm 7. Mark Polino:The argument over Cuba vs. the US is simple. How many people want in and how many people want out, of each.
If Mr. Moore is such a fan of Cuban health care, I’m sure that Fidel would welcome his defection. Perhaps we could trade him for a nice Cuban painter.
There is no one risking their lives to flee Miami for free Cuban health care or anything else. If you want to go to Cuba from the US, you have go through Canada or Mexico. What a burden. To leave Cuba for the US you need a rickety boat, nerves of steel, shark repellant and a desire for a better life.
As for the election, run Fred run!
Mark
May 3, 2007 - 12:21 pm 8. tk:Electroshock treatment may be used for depression or biopoloar or whatever they think it works for, but giving it to someone who is healthy, other than having the ‘wrong’ political beliefs is like cutting off your leg to cure athlete’s foot. It’s a tragic abuse.
May 3, 2007 - 1:02 pm 9. scott:follywood, follywood
May 3, 2007 - 1:05 pm 10. Assistant Village Idiot:Rob’s info on ECT is correct, though tk’s caution also stands.
Moore is just trying to help his tribe. Tribes will ally with outsiders who they believe can help them come to power within their own culture. They sadly do not consider the long-term consequences of this. Some Arab tribes allied with the Crusaders to defeat other Arab tribes. Some Native American tribes took the arriving Europeans as allies against other neighboring tribes, from Massachusetts to Peru, which ultimately aided in their own conquest.
Moore believes his tribe should rule, and will not look closely at anyone who will help him defeat the conservative tribe(s). Appealing to the reality of what life is like in those tribes is pointless. It is irrelevant to Moore.
May 3, 2007 - 1:30 pm 11. Laurie Davis:Years ago, I was very good friends with a young physician from Cuba – - during dinner one night he described what it was like in Cuba when Castro took over …. people being shot to death in front of their homes, being put in prison, and losing everything they owned. When he was around 6 his Dad, a physician, took his entire family and left on a supposed ‘vacation’. They left everything they had, their home, their belongings. His Mother hid some family jewels in her hair – - they were heirlooms with great sentimental value. She didn’t disclose what she had done until she was ’safe’ within the borders of the US. Her husband reminded her that if the Castro regime had discovered her hidden treasure, the entire family, including the young children would have been shot to death.
That’s the ‘heroic regime’ Michael Moore and the rest of the Hollywood idiots revere and talk about. People like Harry Belefonte who made a fortune from the US, now attacks the very country that made him famous.
Michael Moore is an idiot and I wish more people would just say it outloud, like Fred Thompson.
Fred Thompson for President.
May 3, 2007 - 1:54 pm 12. Rick Kennemer:I have bought 10 Fred thompason shirts at http://www.tshirtpoll.com
He is leading in many polls.
Rock on Fred!!
May 3, 2007 - 3:05 pm 13. MyFriendOtis:Thanks Senator.
As someone else paraphrased George Orwell: Whenever you see a boot crushing a human face, there will be a leftist pointing to the poor bastard’s free universal health care.
May 3, 2007 - 4:11 pm 14. Dave:I have an acquaintance whose parents managed to leave Cuba when he was a boy.. they waited seven years for a government response to their request to emigrate, and when it finally came, it was “you have two weeks to leave, and if you do not, your permit is revoked”.
They were searched at the airport for anything of value. The airport cops even took her wedding ring.
And of course, before they left, they all knew people who had disappeared. At one point Castro was running short on sugar production, and his response was to send squads out at midnight, rousting ablebodied men and hauling them off to the other side of the country for canefield slavery, never even telling their families where they’d gone or when to expect them back.
And when they ran out of men, they came for the women.
Communism is the work of the devil.
May 3, 2007 - 4:56 pm 15. Ringmaster:Give em hell, Fred!!
It’s rumored on the internet you have a concoction resembling “The Dip” from the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, that you can dunk a commie into and dissolve them.
I, of course, believe it.
May 3, 2007 - 5:59 pm 16. Robert Jewett:Electro-shock as a treatment for Bi-polor Schizophrenia. Has been discontinues since the late 1950’s
May 3, 2007 - 6:27 pm 17. stlpatriot:My mother was given Electro-shock, but the treatment was de bunked and not used when better medicines were developed.
Senator Thompson,
Please, for the love of all things holy, throw your hat in the ring tomorrow…. What better place to announce??
Run Fred! Run!!!
May 3, 2007 - 7:37 pm 18. Dan:Good article!
RUN, FRED, RUN!
May 3, 2007 - 7:47 pm 19. Linkster9:Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for so clearly illustrating the unparalleled ignorance and naivete embodied by the conservative, RepuliKKKan masses. You are done…hopefully forever, but we thinking Americans will not quickly forget the incredible damage you have done. Please continue your Nazi-esque commentary. Bu-bye idiots.
May 3, 2007 - 8:10 pm 20. stlpatriot:See Fred!, You’re already scaring the hell out of moonbats nation wide… keep it up, and good luck tomorrow!!
I REALLY want to hear whats so ignorant and nazi-esque about this article..
From the look of your post linkster9, I’m not sure you even come close to “clear thinking”, and you’re definately not an American…
Run Fred! Run
May 3, 2007 - 9:33 pm 21. Jason Schwartz:Please run Fred! PLEASE!
May 4, 2007 - 5:55 am 22. Rich:Dear Senator Thompson
When I read your words, I hear Ronald Reagan’s voice.
Please run.
May 4, 2007 - 7:58 am 23. David:“According to Forbes magazine, by the way, Castro is now personally worth approximately $900 million.”
And I thought communism made everybody poor and miserable. Guess I was wrong about that…
May 4, 2007 - 8:01 am 24. Retro:Fred, it’s your civic duty to come to the aid of our once great nation – just as it is our duty to vote (for you!).
Answer the call, Fred!
America DESPERATELY needs a clear thinking TRUE AMERICAN like yourself – not the mamby-pamby lickspittle RINO’s that are currently in the GOP line up.
Please, we NEED you now more than ever.
Run, Fred!, run!!!
(t-shirts ordered – thanks for the link!)
May 4, 2007 - 8:02 am 25. DemocracyRules:As a Canadian, I can travel to Cuba, and did, and I made a point of examining their health care system (without getting arrested). Michael Moore is addicted to truth abuse and fact pollution, and he is uttering egregious falsehoods. The Cuban people are extremely poor ($20/mo). I visited a hospital close to the University of Havana. In Canada or the US, it would be closed that day. I have seen cleaner stables, by far. Health care staff are desperately trying to help people, with almost no medication whatsoever. Everything is in short supply, including soap and light bulbs. People commonly beg for aspirin on the street, and if you go to Cuba, take a bunch of aspirin, it will be very warmly received.
May 4, 2007 - 10:37 am 26. D. Ferguson:I will VOTE for Fred whether he runs or not!!!!!
May 4, 2007 - 10:42 am 27. Jay Travis:Fred,
Jul 16, 2008 - 12:56 pmyou failed to mention that according to the CIA Factbook( since you don’t believe M. Moore), Cubans live as much as Americans.
So they must be doing something right.
As far as all these people urging you to run …. well, maybe you needed some Cuban rum because you certainly didn’t go very far.