It’s “Free” . . . But Healthcare Costs Us

It's "Free" . . . But Healthcare Costs Us / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

Posted on April 29, 2014



"Your health service is free… but it costs"

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega



You've been able to see them for almost two years in every health care

unit of the Cuban Public Health System, from any primary care office or

clinic, passing through each second level hospital, even in tertiary

care centers in each Institute. They welcome us from the door of the

consultation room or from the trade union wall and assure us that our

omnipotent government has always been zealous to guarantee absolutely

fee medical care for our people.



Seen that way, without more, it would seem a simple matter. In this

world, where to the shame of the species, dozens of thousands of

children still die of curable illnesses because they do not have access

to a few tablets and a measly intravenous infusion, it would be the most

natural thing for Cubans to prostrate ourselves in gratitude before such

an excess of philanthropy. But if there is one thing we learned long

ago it is that here, when you look into the background of the matter, we

have all been charged.



It is true that the hospital does not charge us directly at the hospital

or at our children's school, but without doubt the cash register at the

"hard currency collection store" (TRD*) charges us, and in a currency

arbitrarily overvalued 25 times in relation to the other currency in

which we are paid an unreal salary of little use to us.



These words are not trying to be an inquisitorial onslaught against the

health care system to which I belong, whose essential function is

impeded by limitations that no sector in Cuba can escape.



Any gratuitous attack would leave on this page the odor of the knife in

the back, an aroma that this Cuban detests, but 40 years of hammering

did not end up convincing me that guaranteeing a right, or trying to,

grants in any way authority to my government to deprive us of other

rights as essential as that.



And it is here — more than at the door of the TRD and the hotels, or in

the immoral taxes of the General Customs Office, or in the extortionate

cost of each consular administration abroad, among other hundreds of

shameful examples — where we millions of Cubans have been charged the

true currency exchange: it has been through the humiliation of the

famous diplo-tiendas*, or in the door of the prohibited hotels, or

through the despotism of the migratory authorities or the mistreatment

by any other kind of official or through the systematic deprivation of

our civil and political rights.



And invariably in the background posters like the one illustrating this

post justifying as life-saving the entitlements that crush us at every step.



On the other hand these public governance schemes are not unique to Cuba

nor to socialism, as has historically been insinuated to us. There are

dozens of examples of countries — and not necessarily from the first

world — that sustain health and education systems as public and free as

ours, and all without demanding in exchange such high doses of

individual freedom.



Very true it is that sustaining the presumed public health costs each

state on a world level very dearly, and Cuba was not exactly going to be

the exception, but also I remember here that each Cuban worker has about

30% deducted from his monthly salary precisely to cover these public

expenses.



I also remember that when our state undertakes to guarantee public

health and education services — the two prime examples — it does not

fulfill only a duty but its more conspicuous obligation, perhaps its

only authentic obligation.



In particular, I ask myself by what magic method the Cuban government

invested $4386.00 pesos in me alone, for the approximately 120

consultations that I did in my last 24-hour medical shift, in which I

used only — if we except the $24 pesos that they paid me for night hours

— my stethoscope, my blood pressure monitor, and some disposable depressors.



But as I am not an economist, I better leave the accounts to others and

dedicate myself, as a good cobbler, to my shoes. After all, it is true

that it costs us . . . and quite expensively, for sure.



*Translator's note: The government itself named the stores that sell

only in hard currency, "Hard Currency Collection Stores"–TRD is the

Spanish acronym–making explicit that their major purpose is to capture

for the government coffers (through extreme overpricing) a major share

of the remittances Cubans receive from their families abroad. Many items

are often, or only, available in these stores (or in the black market).

An early incarnation of these stores were known as "diplotiendas," that

is "diplomat stores" catering to foreigners residing in Cuba.



Translated by mlk.

28 April 2014



Source: It's "Free" . . . But Healthcare Costs Us / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

| Translating Cuba -

http://translatingcuba.com/its-free-but-healthcare-costs-us-jeovany-jimenez-vega/