[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]This looks very interesting. Thanks for posting.

Like, why the Venezuelan president is being treated in a foreign country instead of receiving treatment on his own country ?
If things are so good there , why then I have to send money every time that one of my relatives get sick and need medical treatment because they can't afford to pay for medication or they need some special test.
"The population discovered what quality, humane and free healthcare is" the article say , but if you ask my father in-law, my-mother-in-law, relatives of two friends who died because they couldn't afford their cancer treatment, and so many people who cannot afford their medication, they would tell you otherwise. I am not so sure about what to believe anymore.

He also may be there because of security concerns. I imagine there are rightwingers--not to mention other interested parties (ahem, CIA, DEA, DIA, Exxon Mobil, the Miami mafia)--who would kill him if they could, and in serious cancer treatment, he would be very vulnerable. Cuba likely has the best intelligence service in Latin America. How else have they prevented CIA disruption and coup d'etats in Cuba all these decades? He may be relying on them for his own security while he is seriously ill.

Cuba is acknowledged (everywhere but here) to have a truly superior medical system. It has been in development for decades. I suspect that that's most of the reason.

Venezuela has a developing medical system--and one that never served the millions of poor people before. If you read the article, it says that the idea of the Chavez government was to provide immediate, massive access to medical care, by setting up new community clinics, staffed by 20,000 Cuban doctors, as they developed this massive expansion of medical care; and now those doctors are training Venezuelans to take their places and to keep expanding the care.

There are always gaps in a developing system. Possibly your family and friends are in an income bracket that doesn't qualify them for free care. That is a gap--if they actually can't afford care--and of course it should be remedied. But the country had millions of poor and millions of abject poor, in the barrios and in rural areas, who had never seen a doctor in their lives, ever. How would you prioritize this? Would you provide care first to those who have been able to afford medical care all their lives, but reach a point where the cost goes over their heads? Or would you address the much more serious medical crisis of millions who haven't had any care at all, of any kind, from infancy on?

Your sample (of Venezuelans) is very limited, you understand--your family members and/or friends, and some few others whom they may know. The government has to--and has chosen to--take care of multi-millions, all of them poor or extremely poor. Not just strapped for cash. Not just unable to afford medications. Unable to afford FOOD, or decent housing or any of the basics of life.

I didn't say "things are so good there." Venezuela had too many decades of cruel neglect of the poor by the rich for systems such as medical care or education to be described as "things being so good there." What is remarkable is the Chavez government's goals and what they have achieved so far--achievements in poverty reduction, in the availability of medical care, in educational opportunities, and other social goods, that have been acknowledged by entities such as the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean and the Millennium Project. Their achievements are real and are dramatic, and have certainly been reflected in various kinds of opinion polls and in elections--but the country is not perfect. I do think it is a "good," though--and a very great good--that the government has the GOAL of ending poverty and vast inequality.