While relations between the U.S. and Cuba are slowly being repaired on a national scale, experts took a look at Cuba’s socialized health care system Monday as a part of the Baker Center’s “The Curious Case of Cuba” lecture.
William Keck, a Cuban health care expert and the Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba Review, explained the successes of Cuban health care following the 1959 revolution and the subsequent American embargo.
Keck began by noting Cuba’s low infant mortality rate and life expectancy rate, which are both roughly comparable with American rates despite the embargo. He openly endorsed Cuba’s efforts to ensure health care as a right to its citizens rather than something that must be paid for.
“The underlying principle of health as a human right has driven Cuba’s steady commitment to provide equitable, quality care to its entire population free of charge,” Keck explained. “(Cuba) has shown that even a poor and blockaded country can maintain health outcomes on par with the developed world.”
Paul C. Erwin, head of the Department of Public Health, said he believes the successes of Cuban health care, which include better prenatal care outcomes and higher vaccination rates than the U.S., could serve as examples to help amend the current American system.
Cuba spends, on average, approximately one-twentieth less money per person on health care than the U.S., and Erwin cited Cuba’s acceptance of health care as a human right as just one of many health-related accomplishments brought about by the island nation.
“Trying to see how having those national policies can impact the health and well-being of a population has a very important story to tell us here in the United States,” he explained.
For sophomore and Spanish major Kathleen Price, the lecture served to help reshape her growing understanding of Cuba, a country she said she believes is often unfairly portrayed by American media.
“Until this semester, I was kind of with everyone else in America who is trained to think Cuba is just this terrible awful place,” said Price, who was particularly surprised by the successes of Cuban health care in spite of the longstanding American embargo. “I’ve been led to believe that Cuba is in this awful state, when they’re really not.”
The lecture comes at a pivotal moment in U.S.-Cuban relations, as president Obama announced his plans to normalize diplomatic relations with the communist nation last December. The president is currently seeking to remove Cuba from the U.S. government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, sitting down with Cuban president Raul Castro earlier this month in the first such meeting of the two nation’s leaders since 1959.
