Venezuelan Healthcare Takes Turn for the Worse: "A System Only Michael Moore Could Love"
LA TIMES--Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut, and on one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator.
There were six infant deaths at Palacios over a 24-hour period late last month, and since the beginning of February, six mothers have died in the hospital during or after childbirth.
Cases of malaria nearly doubled in Venezuela between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period. After the medical establishment blamed him for an outbreak of dengue fever last summer, Chavez halted weekly publication of an epidemiology report that for 50 years had tallied occurrences of infectious diseases nationwide.
As the Liberty Papers blog reports, this is a "healthcare system only Michael Moore could love."
(Via Taxing Tennessee)
12 Comments:
Perfect. Lets try it here!
/sarc
Dengue & malaria are both transmitted by mosquitos. These are vector diseases.
While I am no fan of Chavez, it is the U.S. that has been largely responsible for the international ban on DDT, the most effective preventative for malaria ever discovered by man. Fortunately, 3,000 scientists around the world petitioned the WHO to adopt interior spraying for the prevention of malaria. The WHO now recommends DDT for this very selective, controlled, practice that saves lives in a manner that is both safe for human health and the environment.
Why don't you compare the U.S. healthcare system to Germany's healthcare system?
Has Michael Moore said that he loves the Venezuelan health care system or are those the words of a disturbed wannabe capitalist groupy? :D
anon @ 2:53 PM whines: "Why don't you compare the U.S. healthcare system to Germany's healthcare system?
"...
Ahhh, why don't you? Are your fingers broke?
You of course would have to use credible sources...
Maybe the Massachusetts model is what you want... LOL!
juandos said... "Ahhh, why don't you? Are your fingers broke?"
Why don't you, you're the expert?
Why not compare it to the Canadian system? We could start by having Canadians who are looking for emergency services at border hospitals fill out a questionnaire.
Anon 9:09 better yet lets compare the U.S. healthcare system to Canada's healthcare system. Base the study on results, cost and coverage. :D
The problem with America's health care system is not the quality. We still have the best health care system in the world. Why else would Saudi oil princes fly all the way to Cleveland, OH to get heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic?
The real problem is the cost. Cost is a problem because the system is not capitalistic enough. Hospitals collabarate together and fix prices. No competition exists between hospitals. Nor does anyone care to find out the price. If anyone does ask the cost of the medical procedure, the doctor will go, "Who cares, you insurance will cover it." Then they wonder why their premiums keep going up.
However, I don't blame it all on the hospitals. A large portion of the increase in costs has to do with how high the malpractice insurance rates have gotten. Its easy to sue for malpractice and the cost of these suits is passed on to me and you.
So, the only thing wrong with the US's healthcare system is that it needs to be more liberalized to lower the costs. Socializing it will lower costs, but it will also lower the quality of care.
With healthcare, it is like we have the worst of both worlds. We are part heavily regulated but somewhat free market (you can still go and pay cash at some doctors, and negotiate your best deal), but there is also extensive socialist government controlled health care, like the Vet Admin, Medicare and Medicaid. We have good health care, but the costs are skyrocketing because the government and insurance is paying most of the bills. Of course that drives up prices, duh. The way out of this is to remove the insentives for employers to provide health insurance, deregulate the insurance industry, and get rid of veterans hospitals, medicare and medicaid. (I am not saying we should leave Vet's stranded, we should pay for their health care - but dang, you ever been to a veteran's hospital?)
Ok, none of that is ever going to happen. So what do we do? Maybe we can get employers out of health insurance. That would be a step in the right direction.
Wasn't the subject health care in Venezuela? The comparisons in the article dealt with neighbouring countries not the U.S.
In North America, our medical system does not, for example, have to cope with dengue or malaria.
I realize any mention of Michael Moore even in jest brings on the usual debate of public vs. private care but the concerned post conditions in the developing world and how government policy can impact care.
Why do stories about inflation in Zimbabwe ellicit complaints about the fed in the U.S.? Is it always about us?
anon @ 8:28 PM whines: "Why don't you, you're the expert?"...ROFLMAO!
What a nozzle!
I don't care what healthcare is like in Germany since I already have had some first hand experience watching it in action...
Personally I wasn't overly impressed...
I know, why don't you ask Michael Moore?
Considering how impressed Moore was with Cuba's healthcare system, I'm sure he'll be completely enamoured by what Germany has to offer...:-)
My favorite stat on Socialist Health Care® Inc., was in the early 1990s. The entire nation of Canada, pop. ca. 30 million at the time, had all of four CAT scanners for use for all the nation's ill. The relatively poor state of Tennessee, also had four CAT scanners statewide... serving ca. 5 million.
Six to one, folks.
Q-f'n-E-f'n-D.
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