:
:
:
:
Loading...
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
That quiet helps to explain a Cuban anomaly. Cuban health statistics are remarkably good for a country that is so poor. Usually, wealth and health go together. Most left-leaning people in the United States will attribute Cuba’s remarkable health statistics to its socialized medicine. The second hit (right behind Wikipedia) on a Google search for “Cuba’s health care” is a HuffPost article titled “Cuba’s Health Care System: A Model for the World.” The World Health Organization director-general, Margaret Chan, is quoted in the article praising Cuba’s leadership for “having made health an essential pillar of development.”4
Official Cuban health statistics are impressive. Life expectancy in Cuba is 79.5 years, and the infant mortality rate is 4.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. Both of those figures are better than the same figures for the United States. Yet, we also know that the hospitals most Cubans use are so poorly equipped that people often have to bring their own sheets. What gives? The silence is part of the answer.
The lack of automobiles also means a lack of traffic fatalities. Since automobile accidents are a leading cause of death among younger people, the lack of automobiles has a disproportionate impact on life expectancy statistics for reasons that have nothing to do with health care.
The low rate of infant mortality is a product of data manipulation. At seventy-two abortions per one hundred births, Cuba has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and Cuban doctors routinely force women to abort high-risk pregnancies so that Cuba’s bureaucrats can brag about their health statistics. If you correct the data to account for these factors, Cuba’s health statistics look a lot less impressive.5
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
