Why Doctor Services in our Country is so High in Cost or Expensive?....Simple Analysis in Economics...The Supply and Demand...Less Supply and High Demand The Price is High, More Supply Less Demand The Prices is Low ....Therefore More Doctor and Less Patients The Prices is Low...Have Take a Look on Cuba: As A Communist or Socialist Country Almost 100% in Cuba the Education is Free...Therefore the Doctor of Medicine is over Supply Medical staff According to the World Health Organization, Cuba provides a doctor for every 170 residents, and has the second highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world after Italy. Medical professionals are not paid high salaries by international standards. In 2002 the mean monthly salary was 261 pesos, 1.5 times the national mean. A doctor’s salary in the late 1990s was equivalent to about US$15–20 per month in purchasing power. Therefore, some prefer to work in different occupations, for example in the lucrative tourist industry where earnings can be much higher. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio have all reported on Cuban doctors defecting to other countries. Black market healthcare The difficulty in gaining access to certain medicines and treatments has led to healthcare playing an increasing role in Cubas burgeoning black market economy, sometimes termed sociolismo. According to former leading Cuban neurosurgeon and dissident Dr Hilda Molina, The doctors in the hospitals are charging patients under the table for better or quicker service. Prices for out-of-surgery X-rays have been quoted at $50 to $60.[56] Such under-the-table payments reportedly date back to the 1970s, when Cubans used gifts and tips in order to get health benefits. The harsh economic downturn known as the Special Period in the 1990s aggravated these payments. The advent of the dollar economy, a temporary legalization of the dollar which led some Cubans to receive dollars from their relatives outside of Cuba, meant that a class of Cubans were able to obtain medications and health services that would not be available to them otherwise. Cuba and international healthcare Cuba provides more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined. In the 1970s, the Cuban state initiated bilateral service contracts and various money-making strategies. Cuba has entered into agreements with United Nations agencies specializing in health: PAHO/WHO, UNICEF, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP). Since 1989, this collaboration has played a very important role in that Cuba, in addition to obtaining the benefits of being a member country, has strengthened its relations with institutions of excellence and has been able to disseminate some of its own advances and technologies In the 1980s, Cubas decision to withdrawal military assistance from the Marxist-Leninist regimes in Ethiopia and Angola was partly rooted in their inability to meet payments. In 1986, Cuba had 219 doctors per 100,000 people (compared with 423.7 doctors in the Soviet Union, which had the most doctors among industrialized countries). As of 2005, Cuba became the world leader in the ratio of doctors to population with 67 doctors per 10,000 population as compared with 43 in the Russian Federation and 24 in the United States. The supply of physicians came to exceed the domestic market. Moreover, Cuban doctors work on much lower salaries than local doctors. A Guatemalan doctor noted, No ones going to work in the mountains for a salary of $400, the salary for which Cuban doctors work. The $400 is 16 times the doctors salary in Cuba - allowing Cuban doctors to buy refrigerators, stereos and other items that they couldnt afford in Cuba. Cubas missions in 68 countries are manned by 25,000 Cuban doctors, and medical teams have worked in crisis such as the South Asian Tsunami and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. Nearly 2,000 Cuban doctors are currently working in Africa in countries including South Africa, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Mali. Since the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded in 1986, more than 20,000 children from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have traveled to Cuba for treatment of radiation sickness and psychologically based problems associated with the radiation disaster. In response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, Castro offered to send a brigade of 1,500 doctors to the U.S. to provide humanitarian aid, but was never accepted. Cuba currently exports considerable health services and personnel to Venezuela in exchange for subsidized oil. Cuban doctors play a primary role in the Mission Barrio Adentro (Spanish: Mission Into the Neighborhood) social welfare program established in Venezuela under former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. The program, which is popular among Venezuelas poor and is intended to bring doctors and other medical services to the most remote slums of Venezuela, has not been without its detractors. Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle) is a joint health program between Cuba and Venezuela, set up in 2005. The Venezuelan Medical Federation has criticized the appointment of Cuban doctors to high-ranking positions, and protests have taken place in the capital Caracas by Venezuelan medical staff who fear that the Cubans are a threat to Venezuelan jobs. Questions have also been raised by protesters about the level of Cuban medical qualifications, and there have been claims that the Cubans are political agents who have come to Venezuela to indoctrinate the workforce.[69] Opposition supporters in Venezuela have called Cuban doctors Fidels ambassadors and refused to go to their clinics. Two defected doctors have claimed that they were told their job was to keep Chavez in power, by asking patients to vote for Chávez in the 2004 recall referendum. Human Rights Watch complains that the government bars citizens engaged in authorized travel from taking their children with them overseas, essentially holding the children hostage to guarantee the parents return. Given the widespread fear of forced family separation, these travel restrictions provide the Cuban government with a powerful tool for punishing defectors and silencing critics. Doctors are reported to be monitored by minders and subject to curfew. The Cuban government uses relatives as hostages to prevent doctors from defecting. According to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal, growing numbers of Cuban doctors sent overseas to work are defecting to the USA, some via Colombia, where they have sought temporary asylum. According to Luis Zuñiga, director of human rights for the Cuban American National Foundation, Cuban doctors are slave workers who labor for meager wages while bolstering Cubas image as a donor nation and the Cuban government exports these doctors as merchandise. Cuban doctors have been part of a large-scale plan by the Cuban state to provide free medical aid and services to the international community (especially third world countries) following natural disasters. Currently dozens of American medical students are trained to assist in these donations at the Escuela Latino Americana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 17:50:46 +0000
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