I’m not American. And I do not see how his not being Cuban precludes him from accessing facts with regard to Cuba’s healthcare system.
No, the US does spend a lot on its healthcare system. It’s just one of the most inefficient socialized systems out there. It could, of course, divert 50% of its GDP to healthcare, and then (potentially) enjoy the marvels of its spending, whilst crashing the rest of the economy or at the very least starving it of funding.
A system which ought to be purged.
-Jon
It precludes him from facts because I know better than he does.
The US does not diverts 50% of its GDP to healthcare…that’s nosense. Maybe they do in bankers.
No, it doesn’t do so. And my statement about the US spending 50% of its GDP on healthcare was purely hypothetical. Read my post again.
-Jon
In other words he took something that worked fine without government control and ruined it with socialism. And all the while you were forced to pay for this failed experiment.
No, I did not implied that. During his regime it worked for 40 years. The price was just too high to bear, because you pay with your freedom.
Something that works well doesn’t become worse for no reason. In this case, what’s the other reason other than socialism? Yes, it needed 40 years to be ruined, but it happened eventually.
Depends on what you mean by “worked”.
Welcome to the U.S. You are not as free here as you may think you are.
Our “capitalism” here is not free market capitalism. The government here controls almost every trade to varying degrees. When you are limited on what you can produce, what you can trade and what you trade if for, and with whom you can trade it, that’s not freedom. When you can arbitrarily be spied on by your government or government agent without a warrant, that’s not freedom. When the government can take on debt that you are forced to pay back, or that even people that haven’t been born yet have to pay back, that’s not freedom. When the government can search and/or confiscate your property at the border with no warrant, that’s not freedom. When you need a license from the government to legally perform some sort of service for people, that’s not freedom. When the government protects a banking cartel that steals your wealth through inflation (not to mention charges you interest on it), that’s not freedom.
Our education is socialized (government owned), except for a small amount of schools and colleges. Our quality of education has been on a decline for a long time. Unless you have a lot of money to pay for some private education, your best bet for providing your children with a good education is by homeschooling, although it may soon become illegal.
Our health care is heavily controlled by the government and socialized (to what degree, I don’t know). Our health care prices have been increasing due to this regulation. Our health insurance is also heavily controlled by the government. I don’t know for sure, but it’s certainly possible that health care has gone down in quality as well, but from my experience, it just seems that the price has gone up for the same level of health care. I’m fairly young, though (mid-20’s), so I don’t know what it was like before the government intervened so much.
Yes, when you don’t have the government in the way. The socialized education system reduces private competition in education, which causes high costs for decent education. The government protected (and created?) teachers union allows bad teachers to remain in the system for entire careers. The regulation is horrendous. All federal money for local schools and colleges has many strings attached to it. There is hardly any competition in private education, due to the public education cartel and excessive regulation. I think the average cost of a “free” public school is near or above the cost of the most expensive private schools here, yet provides much lower quality education. Some even think that the decreasing quality of education is deliberate (download the book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America).
When someone tells you we are a free country or that we have a “free market”, they are either ignorant, or they are lying to you.
We are a fascist/corporatist country, with many socialist policies, not a free country, let alone free market capitalist country.
You’ve been misled if you think this is a free country. You’ve been misled if you think this is a Capitalist (as in free market) country. The degree of tyranny here may be less than most countries, but we’re far from free here.
The primary problem is allocation of money and services. Cuba is a relatively small tropical island. It is not as large and has multiple environments like U.S.
Population is also a very potent factor. But should you allocate so much health care funding to say, tornado alley, but not enough to a place like Seattle or the East coast, or the Southwest. Diseases, accidents, crimes, all related to healthcare vary in different areas. Insurance rates will vary, population will, and all this creates a massive allocation problem for more waste and red tape.
Another reason why such a big rich country as the U.S. can not make universal healthcare or education is our system of federalism. As you said about exchanging freedom, our power is not ( yet) streamlined and centralized as it is in Cuba. The sheer size is to large to provide quality and quantity socialized healthcare as Cuba has. But since we break up our power and thereby create more bureaucracies, we create more red tape, more money spent on gov’t workers than on sick people. It is the fact that we are rich and huge that we cannot have a functioning social democratic state like Germany. Of course we are to busy putting bullet holes in people 5000 miles away to care for our own. Not to mention our defense obligations. Indeed some European countries rely on our defenses, they do not have to tax their citizens for security. Taking again size into account and the fact of national security importance, defense would severely drain the public purse on healthcare in places. Lets say Georgia had this Cuban like education and health system would they deplete their defense budget for sick people when Russia is flexing muscle. I doubt it.
The major problem with moving to a semi-socialist system from our “capitalist system” is the freedom aspect. Planning creates chaos in the process of change and your dictators are appointed to have sole authority for sake of streamlining things. More power is not a good thing, regardless what the power is used for. Starting a socialistic system for anything is always better and easier form scratch.
The reason why Americans hate the idea of anything “socialized” is our culture and experience. We have not had totalitarianism as Russia and Germany had. And in a “free” country America, someone directing some of our lives will not go over well. Living in a country that gets things done by violations of peoples’ will rubs off on people living there, as in they may not understand or appreciate that small amount of liberty of choosing what brand of aspirin you want. Not to insult you as if you do not appreciate or understand liberty, I may add, but it is easier to rationalize it when you live(d) in it.
That is a short list of why you can’t have functioning healthcare in America as in Cuba. Our corporate system is the least effective compared to free market capitalism, and centralized socialism. Both are planned, one by held to the law, chasing after profit, or by dictators that can violate the law for their altruistic benevolence. Trying to mix social well being and justice with economic liberty does not work. That is why our healthcare and education suck, and small poor Communist Cuba can do much better.