Salud!

On Tuesday, I got a very interesting email in the Inbox.

Greetings Congresswoman Betty McCullum,

The School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota is hosting the 4th annual National Public Health Week Film Festival April 7-11, 2008. We’d love for the Congressional Global Health Caucus to be a co-sponsor of our Tuesday, April 8, global heath-themed film, “¡Salude!.” The documentary tells the story of how the cash-strapped country of Cuba has become ‘one of the world’s best health systems.’
In 2007, the Film Festival attracted approx. 500 people. This year, we are please (sic) to announce that the City Pages is the exclusive media sponsor of the Film Festival. The City Pages reaches nearly 130,000 people from the area.
Your participation as a co-sponsor would help ensure this critical public health issue get the attention it deserves.
Here are two things we would ask of you as a co-sponsor:
1. Spread the word. Help us advertise the Film Festival through your network, using various communications tools. This could include announcing it at an upcoming event, listing it in your newsletter, posting it on your organization’s calendar, or hanging or handing our Film Festival flyers.
2. Drive attendance. Ask your staff, board of directors, key stakeholders and constituents to pledge their attendance in support of the Film Festival and environmental health.

In appreciation of being a co-sponsor, we’d:
1. List your organization as a co-sponsor for Monday, April 7, 2008, on the NPHW Film Festival website; www.sph.umn.edu/filmfest08.
2. Provide a table for you to display your organization’s information and other relevant materials in the evening on Monday, April 7. If your organization is looking for volunteers, please feel free to post a sign-up sheet at your table. Students at the University of Minnesota not only want to learn more about an issue, they want to know how they can participate in finding solutions to the problem.
3. Offer a unique venue to raise awareness about environmental health and promote your coop.

The SPH hopes that the Congressional Global Health Caucus will join us in this exciting event. Please feel free to contact me to discuss your participation.

Now I got this email just as Jazz and I were going on the air at MidStream Radio so I mentioned it to Jazz. Jazz and I both expressed amazement in the fact that there was a "Global Health Caucus" (members include Rep. McCollum D-MN, Rep. Vic Snyder D-AR, Rep. Wayne Gilchrist R-MD, Rep. John Boozeman R-AR, Rep. Donna Christensen D-PR and Rep. Michael Simpson R-ID) and we decided that it was an issue worth pursuing at a later time. So today we asked Fausta to come on and talk to us about it (since Fausta's specialty is Central American politics). Luckily for us, Fausta had seen the movie "Salud! What puts Cuba on the map in the quest for global health" last spring at the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival. One of the things that Fausta talked about (you can listen to the podcast here) was how the movie showed Cuban "medicos" (which do not necessarily mean doctors) do make regular house calls.....in the company of members of the Committee of the Revolution! Let me clarify - the medicos are accompanied by a member OF THE GOVERNMENT and that member of the government is there to make sure that you (the person that the medico is checking up on) is not taking illegal drugs or you drink too much or whether you are eating right or not. Again - let me clarify....the medicos bring government officials TO SEARCH YOUR HOUSE to make sure that you are not doing anything unhealthy! That is what government run health care brings to you.

In her post on the movie, Fausta talks about some interactions that audience members had with the vaunted Cuban Health System.

The first member of the audience to speak was a Princeton University student who has travelled to Cuba three times and witnessed the deplorable conditions of a Cuban hospital (dirt, roaches, etc.), which he compared to the deplorable conditions of the pre-Cuban doctor South African hospital shown in the film. While on another trip he also witnessed how a Cuban citizen he rushed to an emergency room was turned away for being Cuban as that hospital only treated foreigners. Another gentleman in the audience had a similar experience where he rushed a very ill Cuban to a hospital in the island and she was turned down because that hospital was for foreigners only.

Another thing that Fausta mentioned on the podcast (at approximately the 21 minute mark) was that AIDS patients are isolated from the community....shunned for having this disease. Oh sure, they are isolated in a "medical facility" but they are not allowed to leave the facility, they do not get visits from family and friends....they are shipped off to the sanitarium to die. To all of my gay friends out there - is that something you want for your friends and loved ones? I know I certainly don't want that for my cousin who has AIDS.....She also talks about how the average Cuban citizen must bring their own linens and medicines and even bandages with them when they check into the hospital. She also reminded us that when Fidel needed a gastro-oncologist last year, he did not use a Cuban doctor.....oh no, he had a specialist flown in from Spain!

Is it any wonder that most thinking people will recoil away from a government health care system once they find out what it is truly like? I mean, if our health care system were so bad, why is it that so many Canadians take out second and third mortgages in order to come to America for their critical health care needs?

On a final note, isn't it comforting to know that this propaganda (and there is no other word for it) is being funded by your tax dollars.