Yesterday I saw the documentary Salud. It was an accident, Google lied about what was playing at the Coolidge and had a link to the wrong film. Anyway it was an interesting look at the Cuban health care system. The BBC calls it "one of the world’s best health systems." They have better longevity and infant mortality than the US at a fraction of the cost.
Cuba has universal coverage and has a large number of doctors that work in very poor rural areas. They also have sent over 100,000 doctors on humanitarian missions in 101 countries. The film spent a lot of time relating the experiences of people in South Africa, Gambia, Honduras and Venezuela. They really appreciate the Cuban doctors and in some cases are trying to model their own health system after Cuba's. They can't model the industrialized nations systems because they don't have the resources. And it's not clear it would work as those places with privatized medicine have difficulty getting doctors to go into poor barrios.
Good movie, interesting and eye-opening topic.
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