Sex-changes in Cuba will be no-cost, like all health care

... and so wrong. :(

Castro is forcing Cubans to acknowledge the rights of transvestites, transsexuals and transgender people.

First, Cubans are forced to have a world class education system rammed down their throats, then they're forced to endure a high quality universal health care system, and now this.


Oh.. The brutality of it.

:sarcasm:

:thumbsup:

Will the service be available to foreign visitors to Cuba?

If so, how much will they be charged?

If the Cuban healthcare system is able to price SR services competitively, it seems to me they could possibly bring in enough foreign currency to offset the cost of providing the services free of charge to Cuban citizens.

Nothing is really free even in Cuba. Someone has to pay for the facilities, medication and other supplies, etc. as well as the salaries of medical personnel.

who had never thought much about the place, and started trying to find out more about it, I heard then that Cuba has a medical enterprise for tourists who come there, which had been working for some time, back in 2000.

They have arrangements with hotels which completely handle the patients, from check-in at the hotel, to bringing them back at the approrpiate time from the hospital, with attendants helping throughout. It was the first time I'd ever heard about it.

It would seem logical that these surgeries would also be available through the same services.

There have been a couple of DU'ers who had to use emergency medical services when in Cuba, one went through conventional tourists' facilities for dental work, paying that level of charges, and another DU'er broke a leg, while out with friends, who took him to a clinic, where he was treated in the local emergency facilities for Cubans.

Both seemed very satisfied with the level of care they received.

Cuba is not the only place with a superior health care system - Costa Rica is another. My uncle, who loves that country, had a heart attack while visiting there in 1995. He spent two days in cardiac IC in a teaching hospital, then was released and transported home.

He received a bill for the services a few weeks later - $1,800, a tiny fraction of what any US hospital would have charged.

I think it's great that Cuba can provide fine medical services for its people, but (though economics is one of my weakest subjects), it's obvious that someone has to pay for it somehow. If the Cuban government adds a new service to the suite it provides for its citizens, there has to be an offset somewhere for the cost - Raise prices at the gas pump, reduce rice rations, raise taxes, cut services somewhere else, or bring in more money from outside. I suspect they are doing the latter.

For a period of time, they decided to close down some of their sugar mills, as it was not as profitable as tourism, and they wanted to develope their tourist industry.

Venezuela has been doing new business with Cuba, there's a lot going on between them you might find interesting, if you research it.

For one thing, Venezuela is bringing Venezuelan citizens to Cuba for eye surgery/treatment, going into huge numbers. I've started seeing personal accounts from various Venezuelans concerning their satisfaction with their own trips to Cuba. Also, Bolivia has a similar arrangement.

We've read for several years now about people in the Caribbean in places like Jamaica ALSO sending their citizens to Cuba for eye surgery, one a story which still overwhelms me about a Jamaican young school girl who had an eye tumor she'd had most of her life, which had pushed her eye from its place in its socket, and Cuban doctors were able over time to set it all right. I recall her mother had said earlier, that she had always been greatful to her daughter's schoolmates that they had always treated her with such tenderness and kindness during her personal agony as a child.

Her Cuban doctors said that when she arrived she wore a hat over one eye, and had learned to pull her head down so far it had almost disappeared into her chest altogether, as she was so ashamed of her image. Now she's past this.

The arrangement with Venezuela has been given a name, "Operation Miracle."

Cuba also, as you may not have known, has been doing medical research for many, many years, developing drugs which are affordable to people in poor countries who cannot afford the prices of the developed nations companies. They have had great success in that area, and do a decent business, from what I have seen written.

Here's something I located you might find interesting:

Last Updated: Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 00:07 GMT

Medical know-how boosts Cuba's wealth
By Tom Fawthrop
In Havana

Cuba - so long dependent on tourism, the export of cigars and nickel for its survival - has quietly built an impressive healthcare sector that could transform its troubled economy.



Cuban medicine exports help raise foreign currency

Health ministry officials say Cuba's $1.8bn (£1bn) and growing tourism industry will soon be overtaken as the number one foreign exchange earner by biotechnology joint ventures, vaccine exports and the provision of health services to other countries.

Successful clinical trials in several countries have already established Cuba as a world leader in cancer research and treatment.

Last year, Cuba's health budget was boosted by a doubling in biotech exports to $300m, and the country earns fees from foreign patients and from exporting other medicinal products and diagnostic equipment and machines.

Also in 2005, a joint venture biotechnology plant was opened in China, with Havana providing the transfer of cancer treatment technology, and this year Cuba is eyeing the West:

German biotech firm Oncoscience is holding clinical trials of anti-cancer drug TheraCIM h_R3, which it hopes to get registered, and Californian Cancervax is expected to test another Cuban cancer treatment after Washington agreed to make an exception to its trade embargo.

"If we get access to the Western market, then this hi-tech sector could become the locomotive of the entire Cuban economy," says Dr Rolando Perez, scientist at the Centre of Molecular Immunology (CIM).
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4583668.stm

congrats to Cuba.