You Must Be Kidding… PBS Glorifies Cuban Health Care System (Video)
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, December 27, 2010, 6:08 PM
Your taxpayer dollars at work promoting Cuba’s failed socialist system…
PBS recently aired a report on Cuba’s outstanding health care system.
This was simply unbelievable.
Out state-run media is no longer just liberal – It’s communist:
These useful idiots will believe anything!
They forgot to mention that Cuban President Raul Castro just warned his fellow Cubans that they are running out of time and if they don´t change now, their will be an economic collapse.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady at The Wall Street Journal corrected this latest leftist fairy tale.
A Cuban Fairy Tale From PBS
In his memoir covering four years in Cuba as a correspondent for Spanish Television, Vicente Botín tells about a Havana woman who was frustrated by the doctor shortage in the country. She hung a sheet on her balcony with the words “trade me to Venezuela.” When the police arrived she told them: “Look, compañeros, I’m as revolutionary as the next guy, but if you want to see a Cuban doctor, you have to go to Venezuela.”
That story was not in the three-part report by Ray Suarez on Cuban health care that aired on PBS’s “NewsHour” last week. Nor was the one about the Cuban whose notice of his glaucoma operation arrived in 2005, three years after he died and five years after he had requested it. Nor was there any coverage of the town Mr. Botín writes about close to the city of Holguín, that in 2006 had one doctor serving five clinics treating 600 families. In fact, it was hard to recognize the country that Mr. Suarez claimed to be describing.
The series was taped in Cuba with government “cooperation” so there is no surprise that it went heavy on the party line. Still, there was something disturbing about how Mr. Suarez allowed himself to be used by the police state, dutifully reciting its dubious claims as if he were reporting great advances in medical science.
Castro’s military dictatorship marks 52 years in power next week. But the “revolution” is dead. A new generation of angry, young Cubans now vents on Internet blogs and through music, mocking the old man and his ruthless little brother. On Nov. 29, in the city of Santa Clara, hundreds of students launched a spontaneous protest when they were denied access to a televised soccer match they had paid to watch. What began as a demand for refunds soon turned to shouts of “freedom,” “down with Fidel” and “down with socialism,” according to press reports.
Dissent is spreading in Cuba like dengue fever because daily life is so onerous. One of the best documented sources on this subject is the Botín narrative (“Los Funerales de Castro,” 2009, available in Spanish only), which pulls back the curtain on “the Potemkin village” that foreigners see on official visits to Cuba. Behind the façade is desperate want. Food, water, transportation, access to health care, electricity, soap and toilet paper are all hard to come by. Even housing is in short supply, with multiple families wedged into single-family homes. The government tries to keep the lid on through repression. But in private there are no limits to the derision of the brothers Castro.
Mr. Suarez’s report, by contrast, is like a state propaganda film. In one segment, an American woman named Gail Reed who lives in Cuba tells him that the government’s claim of its people’s longevity is due to a first-rate system of disease prevention. He then parrots the official line that Cuba’s wealth of doctors is the key ingredient. What is more, he says, these unselfish revolutionary “foot soldiers” go on house calls. “It’s aggressive preventive medicine,” Mr. Suarez explains. “Homes are investigated, water quality checked, electrical plugs checked.”An abundance of doctors? Not in the Cuba Mr. Botín lived in. In 2006 the government claimed there were 65,000 doctors. That number, he says, was “a figure that many professionals considered inflated.” When Cubans complained they couldn’t get care, he notes that the state upped the number “magically” to 71,000 five months later. Given Fidel’s habit of making things up, it’s hard to know how many competent doctors the government has trained. But there is no disputing the fact that thousands of medics have been sent overseas in large numbers to earn hard currency for the regime. There is also no question that Cubans are paying the price at home…
Hat Tip K. Solomon
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Published May 21, 2012 at 12:19 am - 60 Comments
Missy8s commented:
Propaganda paid for by stolen money from we the people!
winston commented:
Apparently PBS is not kidding. But I am sure they’d be more than welcome to move to Cuba if they think it is such a paradise
succotash commented:
Comng soon to a city near you! The U.S. state run media are lapdogs for this regime and if anyone believes Obama-hellcare is anything but horrendous for this country they are delusional. They can spin this bull any way they want but people who are paying attention know this is coming our way very fast. Obama has ruined the greatest healthcare system on this earth. Shame on him and the sheeple who follow blindly.
pst314 commented:
I would love to see the folks at PBS getting no better health care than do ordinary Cubans. Likewise freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment…. There are fewer sights more gratifying than socialists forced to live under the boot heel they profess to love.
Doctor Duhh commented:
Was there supposed to be a laugh track with this article? Just askin’ is all.
tammycracker commented:
You want to see the REAL cuban health care?
Go here.
http://babalublog.com/2005/03/cuban-mythology-updated/
Or here.
http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
John Fembup commented:
This cipher of a reporter was in Cuba for FOUR YEARS and this is all he accomplished?
Here is the formula:
Take the Castro press release. Forward to PBS HQ’s. Await instructions for next story.
frankg commented:
Went and pushed the dislike button, FWIW.
squeaky commented:
pbs must be all discombobulated…
[The problem with this Misión Barrio Adentro Cuban doctor program is you've turned them into human chattel to be sent like a cash crop export to Venezuela to "pay" for all that "free" oil you get from Chavez. They're commodity chits, your very own Oil-for-Doctors program oozing in corruption for the 'love' of the barrio children and since these ]
http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200502181447
[Seven Cuban doctors sue Cuba and Venezuela over "modern slavery"]
http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/02/22/en_pol_esp_seven-cuban-doctors_22A3470091.shtml
Taqiyyotomist commented:
What is this reporter being “gifted” with while in Cuba?
One wonders, and shudders at the thought, and the probabilities.
Same with all the Hollywood types who do as this reporter has done. They’re getting something out of this, something more than praise from other libs at cocktail parties in Hollywood and DC.
What is it? Money? Drugs? Something else, perhaps… something sexual perhaps? Something that these folks wouldn’t want made known to all, were they to refuse to do EXACTLY as told, and were they to go “off script”?
These people have sold themselves, that seems almost clear. If so: in the end of it all, their price will be told, all will be known, and they will pay their dues.
Granny commented:
Seems to me they have forgotten their own reporting on the way that the Cuban “health” system treats AIDS patients – locked into cells, strapped to gurneys with meds administered by force through the bars.
squeaky commented:
The working conditions are those of slave labor:
Several Cuban defectors interviewed in Bogota said that they fled not only because of oppression in their own nation, but also because of unreasonably poor and demanding work conditions in Venezuela. Andres said that he could not stand the conditions in Venezuela, where he lived in a crowded house with a leaky straw roof which he shared with fifteen other Cuban doctors waiting to be put to work.…The doctors also said that in Venezuela, Cuban minders monitored their movements, prohibiting non-work contact with Venezuelans. When not at work, the Cubans were required to be at home after 6 pm. One couple said that after they pointed out some problems with the programme, officials threatened to send them back to Cuba in retaliation. The Cubans said that the programme they worked in, called “Inside the Barrio”, was also plagued with mismanagement and inefficiency. Although many clinics were severely understaffed, newly-arrived medics sometimes sat for months waiting for assignment to a post, they said, and often conditions in the clinics were rudimentary lacking even basic medicines
http://faustasblog.com/?p=3467
Taqiyyotomist commented:
#8, #11
Squeaky, those are some eye-opening links, thanks.
squeaky commented:
“reporter being “gifted” with while in Cuba?” maybe what he was caught doing..supposedly it isn’t beneath fidel to use a little blackmail…..
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/site/article/hollywood-loves-fidel-but-why/
Taqiyyotomist commented:
Squeaky.
Never read that article, but that’s what I was thinking, to a tee. Trap the all-too-human “useful idiot” with his desires — and with cameras and bugs — and he’ll never be anything but a faithful lapdog.
I say get Breitbart on it. Or the FBI. Certainly, definitely not the United Nations. KEEP THEM AWAY from this angle, at all costs.
Taqiyyotomist commented:
This is, in my estimation, extremely relevant to this PBS reporter’s fantasy-reportage:
““My job was to bug their hotel rooms,” says high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez. “With both cameras and listening devices. Most people have no idea they are being watched while they are in Cuba. But their personal activities are filmed under orders from Castro himself.”
And according to some sources, Havana, given the desperation of its brutalized and impoverished residents, has recently topped Bangkok as the world mecca for child sex.
“He [Delfin Fernandez] has not only met some of the most famous men in the world,” says the London Daily Mirror about the Cuban defector, “he’s also spied on them and been witness to some of their most innermost secrets.”
“When the celebrity visitors arrived at the hotels Nacional, Melia Habana and Melia Cohiba,” says Fernandez, “we already had their rooms completely bugged with sophisticated taping equipment. But not just the rooms, we’d also follow the visitors around. Sometimes we covered them 24 hours a day. They had no idea we were tailing them.”
Famous Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was a special target for this bugging, but nothing of value for Castro came of it. “Everybody already knows I’m a maricon!” Almodovar laughed at Castro’s blackmailers. “So go right ahead! Knock yourselves out!”
“Fidel Castro is a special connoisseur of these tapings and videos,” Fernandez says. “Especially of the really famous.”
And not even his closest “friends” are safe from this bugging. The best example is Castro’s longtime “friend” Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In what appeared as a touching act of generosity and friendship, Castro gave his friend “Gabo” his very own [stolen] mansion in Havana.
“We had remodeled it right before,” remembers intelligence honcho Fernandez, “and we installed more cables for bugging devices than for the normal electrical appliances. We taped EVERYTHING! Fidel doesn’t trust ANYONE.”
Castro’s top intelligence people would gather for the screenings of these tapes almost like Hollywood types for an upcoming movie. “Hmmmm, these scenes are more scandalous than anything in any of her movies!” Fernandez recalls a top intelligence officer chortling while watching the nighttime cavortings of a famous Spanish actress.
“Now it really seems to me, companeros,” the Castro intimate chortled as he looked around the room, “that this senora should be making more respectful comments about our regime, right?”
“But famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence,” says Fernandez. “When word came down that models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss were coming to Cuba, the order was a routine one: 24-hour-a-day vigilance. Then we got a PRIORITY alert,” recalls Fernandez, “because there was a rumor that they would be sharing a room with Leonardo DiCaprio. The rumor set off a flurry of activity, and we set up the most sophisticated devices we had.”
“The American actor Jack Nicholson was another celebrity who was bugged and taped THOROUGHLY during his stay in the hotel Melia Cohiba,” states Fernandez, the man in charge of the bugging.
Turns out, however, that at least one visiting dignitary foiled Castro’s intelligence. On his visit to Cuba in 1998, Pope John Paul II’s assistants discovered and removed several bugging devices from His Holiness’ hotel room.
Perhaps Castro had a grudge against the papacy. Most don’t recall, but in Janurary 1962 Pope John XXIII ex-communicated Fidel Castro from the Catholic Church. It seemed fitting, considering the hundreds of Cuban men and boys crumpling to Castro’s firing squads while yelling “Long Live Christ the King!” during their last seconds alive. ”
Thanks squeaky, #13, for the link.
BurmaShave commented:
Speaking of shameless propaganda, this:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/alana-goodman/384602
ought to make sicko Michael Moore fans pretty embarrassed. The problem is they, like dogs, are practically incapable of being embarrassed.
BurmaShave commented:
BTW, the money quote is in the fifth paragraph in my link above.
Taqiyyotomist commented:
Another relevant article, same author (Humberto Fontova):
“Here boys!—Come here, boys!” yelled the Castro regime in September. Tongues out and tails wagging, those intrepid sleuths who staff the MSM (particularly its Havana bureaus) promptly mobbed the Stalinist regime’s propaganda ministry, slobbering all over them. In seconds, Communist apparatchiks began handing out their puppy treats. The intrepid and hard-nosed MSM sleuths gobbled them up, their tails wagging ever more frantically as their eager tongues lapped up every tid-bit, pausing only for a pat on the head and a “good-boy!” from the snickering Stalinists.”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29996
Mike commented:
In Canada, we just had another medical clinic close. Not due to a lack of demand from patients as their is a massive shortage of family doctors, but because the government in my country won’t allocate any more budgetary money to pay the doctors, so the clinic had to close because of a lack of funding. I suppose the same thing happens in Cuba. Not to worry though, in Canada, you can pay a prostitute for sex or gamble $10,000 at a government-run casino, you just can’t pay a doctor for private care because that is of course, illegal and immoral.
11B40 commented:
Greetings:
Back when hefeissimo Fidel Castro became ill and relinquished his office to his hermano Raul, I read a report somewhere that the Fidelistas had a whole clinic imported, doctors, nurses, equipment, medicines, lest Fidel go to his eternal reward. “All animals are equal; some animals are more equal.” George Orwell wrote that and he meant it.
bitterclinger commented:
Attention, Rand Paul. Please put PBS on one of your first defunding bills!
Taqiyyotomist commented:
OT
Jim, tell us you’re gonna go there:
http://blogslucianneloves.com/Forum/?Thread=WDNZNGWBOR85110PM
“In one of the dumbest moves by a politician in decades, Hawaii’s new Democrat governor has spontaneously pledged to produce Barack Obama’s original, long form birth certificate. Why this bonehead wants to re-open this issue now is anyone’s guess, but it has caused even confirmed Obots like Chris Matthews to ask, “Why not put [the original] out?””
Lindsey Lohan commented:
Want to make it a hell of a lot harder for the Left to push this crap? Call your Congressional rep and DEMAND they defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Whatever excuse you hear respond with “If we can fund PBS with taxpayer dollars, we can fund Fox News with taxpayer dollars”.
Taqiyyotomist commented:
My bad, original article at:
http://www.healthcarebs.com/2010/12/27/video-chris-matthews-becomes-a-birther/
gastorgrab commented:
Everything that Communists claim is based on a logical fallacy.
This is an example of how a subjective opinion is portrayed as an objective fact. Facts can be independently verified. The scientific methodology is totally open, and is based on empirical evidence.
Did the World Health Organization allow Cuba to self-report? How can we determine that the statistics are collected without bias?
.
wow commented:
All the links posted by Squeaky are legit and excellent, as is Mary O’Grady’s assessment. She’s probably one of the best informed journalists I know.
Chavez’ idea in bringing in Cuban doctors was to break the Venezuelan medical association and sideline it, besides providing a means of bringing into Venezuela any other “elements” he wished. It was all planned and premeditated. Oh, and many of those doctors have the training of a nurse at best and there have been many cases – covered up – of malpractice. They, plus the “newly graduated Venezuelan doctors trained in Cuba and some at the Bolivarian University” in less than 3 years, will give you an idea of the care patients receive. And before anyone trots out the canard that Venezuelan doctors did not want to go into the “barrios” etc. to work… it is mandatory for ALL medical graduates to put in one year of work for the government in these places and rural dispensaries. THIS IS MANDATORY to ensure medical care throughout the country.
Henry Hawkins commented:
Wake me up when the news stories begin about Americans starved for decent health care building rafts to go to Cuba.
Tiger01 commented:
GOP please defund this hideous vile monstrosity that is PBS. This is what Cuban health care is really like: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/10/cuba%E2%80%99s-healthcare-horror/
Sheesh! commented:
How many years of liberal indoctrination do PBS staff members need to go through to get hired?
Taqiyyotomist commented:
#32 Sheesh!
Just the standard K-12, I think.
GLM In Ohio commented:
Yes, that would be K-12 …. any college would just be redundant.
Rock commented:
Henry Hawkins #30 nails it with stunning simplicity, “building rafts to go to Cuba” if things are so great in Obama’s, oops Castro’s Cuba why are the greatest numbers of Cuban’s leaving Cuba not going there. Also of note, no mention of the number of Cuban doctors defecting to the United States.
Rose commented:
Pass a law that all PBS employees, particularly Executives most expressly, are not allowed to have any American medical attention, that all their medical attention from the date of the airing forward shall be only from Cuba – alone. And nowhere else at all.
And not to Rich Visitors Section of the Hospital, but the section for ordinary Cuban non-government Citizens.
I have no words to express how easily I could enforce such a law on PBS.
Rose commented:
#30 – I’ll gladly purchase the innertubes for the Dims’ trips over – have said so ever since Elian arrived here – without his mother.
Ruebacca commented:
The American left lives in a fantasy land.
Mrs. McPea commented:
Can you say cognitive dissonance?
VeryConcerned commented:
No surprise there! A straight government funded singing the praises of one dictator’s health care system while our dictator adopts a more watered down version. We can’t be equal to the rest of the world until we have what all these commie countries have.
jorgen commented:
He is not awake. Knock him hard on the head and put him in a Cuban hospital. That should cure him – at least cure him of commie ideas.
Chloe commented:
If this medical care is so great, why aren’t these commies down in Cuba benefitting from it?
ICELANDMARC commented:
PBS has always been the American mouthpiece for the tyrannical regime in Cuba. The Castro brothers are the world’s biggest pimps, no wonder the left covers for them and swarms and fellates them at every opportunity.
Henry Hawkins commented:
Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
Here’s one!
Throw him on, then.
I’m not dead!
He says he isn’t dead.
Well, he’s been very ill.
But he’s not dead.
He soon will be.
I’m not dead!
Well, regulations don’t allow me to take him.
I’m not dead!
What’ll we do, then?
[WHACK]
There we go.
Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
Rich commented:
If Cuba’s anything is so great, why then do Cubans risk their lives and try to float across the Atlantic Ocean in tricked out Chevys to get here?
Stuart commented:
Ray Suarez deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his wonderful report, as did his mentor Walter Duranty.
Mad Hatter commented:
And this is a shock that P”BS” did this?
Cheryl Bowman commented:
They are free to have their opinion – yet, I am NOT free to NOT support them in the spewing of their opinion and misinformation! This new congress should cut off the spending for NPR and PBS – or at least try. It’s not that we want to squelch their free speech (despite their wanting to tamp down ours with Net Neutrality), they just need to do it on their own dime. They should further NOT be aired in our public schools, giving the impression to our children that what they broadcast is truth.
former ACLU member commented:
Preposterous Marxist propaganda paid for with tax dollars.
I hope there are sufficient neurons and testicles in the Stupid Party to defund PBS.
Nicknack commented:
PBS NPR CPB Deparment of Energy, Department of Education, ObamaCare all need to be defunded because they dont work. Imagine a news broadcaster saying the American public trusts them the best and putting out this garbage.
Cuba_feh commented:
That pro-Cuban healthcare American, Gail A. Reed of MEDICC Review in this PBS POS: http://tinyurl.com/lfhtvc