"Newsnight", as the cognoscenti of British politics know, is one of the most popular and highly regarded news programs in Great Britain. Airing on BBC2 every weeknight at 10.30, the program is known for its hard-hitting interviews and thorough, if somewhat left-leaning, reporting. Therefore, it came as a bit of a surprise that John Harris, a shameless propagandist, was allowed to film and broadcast a "Newsnight" report about healthcare in Cuba that fails the usual standards of objective reporting.
The report starts with the sounds of jolly Cuban music and happy children playing football in the street. There is no sign or, for that matter, mention of the political prisoners who fill Fidel Castro's prisons. Yes, there is a mention of food shortages and lack of consumer goods, but those are, Harris tells us, America's fault. In reality, the U.S. trade embargo is almost totally meaningless, since Cuba can trade with the rest of the world. All it needs to do to prosper is to produce goods and services that other people want to buy -- not an easy task for a socialist economy.
Moreover, we are told in typically Orwellian fashion, shortages are really a blessing in disguise. After all, are the Cubans not lucky to be spared the scourge of fast food and passenger cars? Walking and a "balanced" diet, Harris informs us, are the ingredients for a long and healthy life. The Cubans even have an association that promotes healthy living on the island. The vice-president of the 120 Club, Professor Gerardo De La Vera, recommends that in order to live to 120, one has to start by moving to Cuba. A government employee praising Cuba to high heaven? What a surprise.
The "Cuban miracle," as Harris puts it, rests on the prevention, rather than treatment of disease. And for good reason! Treatment of disease requires advanced prescription drugs and expensive medical equipment that have to be purchased in the capitalist West. And how can an inefficient socialist economy produce enough foreign currency to afford such purchases? It cannot.
Not surprisingly, Harris does not mention the availability of drugs. Therefore, a viewer who is otherwise ignorant of Cuba might simply conclude that they are readily available. After all, to get drugs in the West, all you have to do is to walk into the nearest pharmacy. Yes, many Westerners grumble because drugs can be expensive and the insurance companies will not pay the full cost. It is also true that some Americans don't have health insurance. But life without access to prescription drugs at all? Try living on the paradise island.
As Matus Posvanc, an economist who works for the Hayek Foundation in Slovakia, wrote to me after his recent trip to Cuba, "The people have no access to prescription drugs. The pharmacies are empty of even the most basic medicine. In fact, I had to help a Cuban lady buy drugs at a special clinic that has wonderful facilities and is well stocked with drugs. That clinic, however, only caters to tourists and prominent members of the Cuban Communist Party." Other acquaintances, who have been to Cuba, found that the locals had to supply their own medicines and linen, because hospitals simply did not have them.
Both of my parents are medical doctors and I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. As such, I find the problems of the Cuban healthcare system very familiar. As in Cuba, so in Czechoslovakia and throughout the supposedly egalitarian Soviet bloc, the prominent members of the Communist Party enjoyed superior healthcare in special hospitals or hospital wards. As in Cuba, the lack of hard currency resulted in the shortage of medicines, which had to be bought on the black market. As in Cuba, the availability of advanced medical technology was low. Socialism, it turns out, does not work no matter where you go -- Central Europe or the Caribbean.
In an article in the British daily The Guardian, Harris recently opined, "Cuba may look forlorn, all peeling buildings and pockmarked roads. Its economy may have long since tumbled into creaking anarchy. But unlike the old states of Eastern Europe, the revolution has a few genuine jewels to defend: chiefly, its education system, and globally acclaimed healthcare."
Strange, the superiority of communist healthcare was exactly what the Western socialists, like Harris, raved about during the Cold War. When the Berlin Wall fell and with it the veil of ignorance that shrouded the life behind the Iron Curtain, communist healthcare came to be seen for what it really was: far from equal and far from excellent. The same, I suspect, will become obvious in Cuba once the Castro brothers finally depart.
