The Left's Love of Cuba: Bad Medicine

Nick Kristoff of the NYT (and former Oregonian -- the State, not the paper) recently published a column on Cuba [update: column now archived], so I thought I'd drop my two cents into the pot.

My senior year in high school (in Jan. of 2000), I was a member of a delegation of student Debaters who went to Cuba to challenge our Cuban counterparts in a series of "Congress format" debates across Cuba, with special permission from the U.S. State Department (we were guests on CBS's Morning Show prior to our trip, so you might have heard about us. A documentary was also made of the trip, which you might have seen on PBS or other similar venues).
During our 9-day trip we debated everything from the Embargo (or 'Blockade' as the Cubans say), to human rights, and pretty much everything in between.
We discussed at length the Cuban health care system, including tours of several medical facilities (courtesy of our Communist Party Escorts, who it seemed were more concerned with monitoring what the Cubans said to us, as opposed to what we did). From what I saw (and what I'd gathered in research for the trip, etc.), I think it is fair to say that the Cuban medical system does feature some outstanding medical professionals, who do some great work with the limited supplies that they have. What annoys me, though, is that so many liberal pundits like Kristoff use the oversimplified snapshot of Cuba's medical system to try and imply some sort of redeeming quality to Castro's rule in general. There are several key points that such pundits miss however:

1)Cuban doctors often study in the U.S., or at least that's what we were told by our Cuban minders. In fact, the Cuban system doesn't have the capability to create the level of advanced medical study/research necessary to sustain their system. In other words, the Cuban system is dependent upon the American medical system that Kristoff and others love to criticize.

2)The compliment that "Cuban doctors do great work with the limited supplies they have" is as much a damnation of the Cuban system as it is a compliment to the individuals of the system. Despite what the Cubans may say, it's not the Embargo that ultimately prevents modern medicine and technology from reaching Cuba. Were the Embargo lifted tomorrow, the Cubans would simply be unable to afford the market value of the supplies they need now that Cuba is in the "Special Period" (Castro's term) thanks to the end of $6B worth of Soviet subsidy. Now that the Russians stopped bailing out Cuba, it seems apparent that their system (economic and medical) is simply untenable (Maybe if Castro didn't steal and spend all of his citizen's money on maintaining his police state things would be different, but if Leftist pundits have their way, we'll never know).

To this end, it is baffling as to how Kristoff could extol the virtues of a medical system that can't propagate itself, even despite the head start given from American research and education...