Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Why We Don't Want Socialism Here

Michael Moore and others extoll the virtues of Cuba-style medicine, but there are good reasons to oppose it.

As these examples of Cuban progress roll in, CNN is presenting Cuba's socialized health care system as "a model for health care reform in the United States," according to a report on the cable network last week. The report credits low cost and universal coverage.

"How does Cuba do it?" gushed the CNN anchor. "First of all, the government dictates salaries. Doctors earn less than $30 per month — very little compared to doctors elsewhere. And priority is given to avoiding expensive procedures, says Gail Reed (a contributor to the Cuban communist party propaganda organ Granma), who's lived and worked in Cuba for decades."

But instead of pluses, these features are at the root of why the Cuban system is not a model. Government-dictated salaries — like Medicare payments here — reduce incentives for doctors to provide quality care. And when cheap procedures are a priority — as they are, say, in the U.K. — teeth get pulled instead of filled. But the basic problem with socialism is that there's literally nothing there.

CNN gives little attention to the fact that hospitals in Cuba have no Band-Aids and are short on aspirin and actual medicine. Photos from TheRealCuba.com show hospitals strewn with filthy mattresses, infested with cockroaches and full of bony patients nursing ugly bedsores. The only plenty within Cuba's universal coverage system is one of want.

Paying doctors next to nothing sounds great...if you aren't a doctor.