The myth of Cuban health care has reverberated throughout the international community for decades.
Despite the communist authoritarian regime’s stifling of dissent, deprivation of basic liberties, and inhumane treatment of its citizens, members of the international community have been quick to heap praise on Cuba for what—on the surface—appears to be a (counterintuitively) successful health care system.
On paper, Cuba has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, averaging roughly 4.3 infant deaths per 1,000 births. The average life expectancy for a Cuban is roughly the same as an American, and Cuba sends more doctors abroad than most of the rest of the world, with tens of thousands of doctors in more than 60 countries.
Those statistics have earned Cuba widespread praise. The Huffington Post called the Cuban health care system “a model for the world.” The director of the World Health Organization in 2014 said Cuba’s health care system was “the way to go,” praising its citizens’ “access to quality medical services.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has glorified the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as someone who “gave [Cuba’s] kids health care.”
All that praise is based on falsehoods.
One of the biggest myths surrounding Cuban health care is the country’s low infant-mortality rate. Cuba is able to achieve what appears to be a remarkably low infant mortality rate not through superior and widespread health care, as defenders of the system want to believe, but rather through forced abortions and falsified statistics.
Cuba has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. Women are regularly pressured into aborting babies that could have some sort of “abnormality,” and Cuban doctors are notorious for performing abortions without consent of the mother.
Moreover, Cuban doctors have admitted to regularly falsifying statistics about childbirth in an attempt to keep the country’s child mortality rate artificially low.
The country’s health care woes extend far beyond the infant mortality rate, however. Despite supposedly having equal health care for all, Cuba in reality has a three-tiered system.
The top tier is full of shiny hospitals and well-trained doctors providing expensive treatments, but it is only available to foreigners. The second tier is restricted to the Cuban elite and is also made up of state-of-the-art hospitals providing high-quality care.
Then there is the third tier—the one foreigners do not see—that is available to the ordinary Cuban citizen. The health care in this tier is horrendous, comprising hospitals that are falling apart and so unsanitary that citizens are often better off not going; a lack of access to basic medications; and mandates that patients bring their own sheets, soap, towels, food, and even light bulbs to receive medical care.
By Zach Thapar
