The site shows statistics relevant to standards of living in Cuba. It compares them to other Latin American nations. It also lists facts detailing the Cuban economic and financial sector.
Very interesting what immense Cuba has managed to gain on its tiny island.
Some excerpts:
Persons per Doctor ____
Cuba - 169 United States - 421 Brazil - 844 Dominican Republic - 949 Haiti - 10,005
Unemployment _____ Cuba - 1.9% Bolivia - 8% United States - 9.5% Argentina - 15.6% Haiti - 70%
Inflation ___ Cuba - 0.30% US - 3.20% Argentina - 9.6%
Women in Government ____ Cuba - 36% Argentina - 31% US - 14%
Facts ___ * The average Cuban worker has ten years of education; one of every ten scientists in Latin America and the Caribbean is in Cuba (although Cuba makes up only 2% of the region's population).
* The UN recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition.
* Gas bills in Cuba average 2-4 pesos (8-16 cents) a month; electricity 5-7 pesos (20-28 cents) a month; telephone 6-8 pesos (24-32 cents) a month, the first 300 minutes being free. As you can see, all these services are subsidized by the State.
Sure, the footnotes and there are there for the ORIGINAL posting, people can go in and edit stuff while still have the cites sourced.
If that happens, Wikimod monster will go in and nom the statement to pieces. Wikipedia gets 2.5 billion pageviews per day - tey have hundreds, no, thousands of moderators who go through every inch of it with a fine-tooth comb. Various studies have shown it to be 80-95% accurate, I'm pretty sure. considering that it's much larger than any other comparable encyclopedia, that's really d**n good. It's reliable.
The only thing about Cuba is that a good deal of its economy is made up of tourism profit. That makes a lot of their economy relatively unstable.
"Much of this Venezuelan oil is subsidized. Because payment terms are so favorable to Cuba, analysts estimate that Venezuela is providing Cuba approximately 20,000 to 26,000 bpd of free oil, for a total gift of $6 to $8 billion over the next 15 years..."
"In return for oil, Cuba is sending Venezuela between 30,000 and 50,000 technical staff. As many as 30,000 Cubans in Venezuela are presumably medical doctors."
25,000 to 30,000 is a conservative estimate, there are well over ten thousand doctors being exported to between 60 and 90 countries. in addition, there is a special brigade made of 3,300 cuban doctors that globe-trots to impoverished and devastated areas.
if the doctors aren't in cuba, they can't be added into the ratio of cubans per doctor, because they aren't taking care of cuban patients. therefore, subtract the 30,000 doctors living in venezuela from your given estimate of 70,000 total doctors, and divide by your given estimate of 12 million cubans. conclusion - the article's stats on doctors is grossly misleading, like most of the other stats it listed.
The statistics I looked at say 1 doctor per 169. I doubt exported doctors are counted. If Cuba has so many doctors that it is even exporting them, I think it rather shows the abundance of them. It also goes well with the "ersons per hospital bed" statistic.
And how did you get the number 1 doctor per ~225 for US?
"we're using Drace's info because he. uh, supported his claims."
if you try to verify his original claims, you'll find the links are broken. http://www.cubatruth.info/doctors.html
"I doubt exported doctors are counted."
aside from the busted links, there is a world almanac book listing. almanacs take the entire population of a country's citizens and divide it into fields of employment. cuban doctors living in venezuela are cuban citizens, and there's every reason to suspect that they would be counted. if you have sources to the contrary, you should post them, but i doubt wiki will be able to help you.
this is a slideshow of cuba's declining health care system due to the soviet blockade of aid to cuba, just to drive home the point: special report: cuba healthcare decline slideshow. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galleries/cubahealth/pages/splash.htm
"And how did you get the number 1 doctor per ~225 for US?" stats for american primary care providers and specialists: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08472t.pdf
"It also goes well with the 'ersons per hospital bed' statistic."
if you're a resident of average means, and you have a serious condition, then you can't afford to pay under the table for a specialist, the sutures to sew you up, or the medicine to treat your conditions. the hospitals in cuba are dilapidated, reflecting the lack of quality in care you should expect to receive. compare the videos of an american hospital to a cuban one - just to see what your stats can't show you.
american hospital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1xV9lGorMQ american hospital room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdWa60koANA
this is a slideshow of cuba's declining health care system due to the soviet blockade of aid to cuba, just to drive home the point: special report: cuba healthcare decline - slideshow:
"Since Soviet aid to health care dried up in the early 1990s, alternative medicines like acupuncture have become popular to Cubans like Juan Aleman Perez."
if you try to verify his original claims, you'll find the links are broken. http://www.cubatruth.info/doctors.html
Though you can still find them on the web if you looked.
aside from the busted links, there is a world almanac book listing. almanacs take the entire population of a country's citizens and divide it into fields of employment. cuban doctors living in venezuela are cuban citizens, and there's every reason to suspect that they would be counted. if you have sources to the contrary, you should post them, but i doubt wiki will be able to help you.
You would think the World Bank is smarter than that.
this is a slideshow of cuba's declining health care system due to the soviet blockade of aid to cuba, just to drive home the point: special report: cuba healthcare decline slideshow. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/ph ⦠n"And how did you get the number 1 doctor per ~225 for US?" stats for american primary care providers and specialists: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08472t.pdf
And yet just about every other source tells me different. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm
if you're a resident of average means, and you have a serious condition, then you can't afford to pay under the table for a specialist, the sutures to sew you up, or the medicine to treat your conditions. the hospitals in cuba are dilapidated, reflecting the lack of quality in care you should expect to receive. compare the videos of an american hospital to a cuban one - just to see what your stats can't show you
I found the video of the cuban hospitals in a Fox News video :P
And really, I was so totally expecting a country like the US to be able to a competitor with Cuba on how much it can spend on its hospitals.
While Americans spend more money on their hospitals (obviously), the use of them is unfairly distributed and the cost of it is payed by taxpayers, and yet its inefficient in providing cheap health care.
Cuba, with its minimal resources is able to dedicate much more of its resources on health care.
And Cuba obviously suffered from Soviet aid, so what?
"I found the video of the cuban hospitals in a Fox News video :P" i had a lot of videos on cuban hospital rooms to choose from and since i don't watch fox, i had no idea they appeared in their video. the author of the video i picked was called "cubano-something", so i thought it was unbiased. in all the users' videos that i watched, my impression was that patients provide their own toiletries and bedding materials, the rooms are relatively unsanitary, and there were no consumables provided by the hospital, things such as plastic pitchers of ice water. the patients in cuba must accept these conditions as they have no rights.
"(American hospitals are) inefficient in providing cheap health care." of course, because the patient has rights so they can sue their doctor or hospital for malpractice. insurance against malpractice is very expensive, and american hospitals and physicians must charge to offset those costs. in cuba, a patient cannot sue their doctor or hospital for malpractice; this prevention of patient rights helps cuba keep health care costs low.
"And yet just about every other source tells me different." you are looking at half the story. in america, a primary care provider has the clinical training to diagnose the patient and also to prescribe medicine. because of malpractice, the trend in america is to boost primary care providers in order to keep health care costs at a minimum. in a single clinic, one doctor may oversee many primary care providers, but he must accept the legal responsibility for their decisions.
"the use of (hospitals) is unfairly distributed" any unfairness in america is small in relation to cuban healthcare's two-tiered system of preferential treatment for the wealthy, and inadequate treatment for its workers. all communists should be critical of such inequality, demanding a more egalitarian distribution in cuba's healthcare system.
"You would think the World Bank is smarter than that." this is your responsibility to prove. the stat showing the citizens to doctor ratio is like any other, citizens are citizens, regardless of their geographical location. about half the cuban doctors were smart enough to obtain exit visas, so this stat is misleading unless you can prove otherwise.
"Though you can still find them on the web if you looked. " drace, don't be lazy. this is your thread and your responsibility to provide real sources, as most of the stats are in direct contradiction to the known events surrounding cuba's economic and healthcare hardships. your thread is failing, and it just makes it worse if you can't provide verification of its title's meaning through other web sources.
"And Cuba obviously suffered from Soviet aid, so what?" the one thing that cuba can be proud of is its revolution for independence. everything after that was just a trainwreck waiting to happen. fidel has had 50 years to figure out how to create a sustainable economy without american intervention. his revolution commenced with 100% unemployment, 0 gdp and the embargo. the problem was to build a new economic system under those conditions. he avoided doing that to suck off the soviet union - her warm milk accounted for 1/3 of his gdp. it was just a very stupid decision by the liberator of cuba to rely on soviet imperialism for cuba's welfare.
