Why is the US Waging Perpetual War on Cuba's Health Care System?

http://counterpunch.org/blum06062011.html

In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged. The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to combat the three deadly pandemics in 150 countries. (Prensa Latina (Cuba), March 12, 2011.)

"This mean-spirited policy," the Cuban government said, "aims to undermine the quality of service provided to the Cuban population and to obstruct the provision of medical assistance in over 100 countries by 40,000 Cuban health workers." Most of the funds are used to import expensive AIDS medication to Cuba, where antiretroviral treatment is provided free of charge to some 5,000 HIV patients. (The Militant (US, Socialist Workers Party), April 4, 2011.)

The United States sees the Cuban health system and Havana's sharing of such as a means of Cuba winning friends and allies in the Third World, particularly Latin America; a situation sharply in conflict with long-standing US policy to isolate Cuba. The United States in recent years has attempted to counter the Cuban international success by dispatching the US Naval Ship "Comfort" to the region. With 12 operating rooms and a 1,000-bed hospital, the converted oil tanker has performed hundreds of thousands of free surgeries in places such as Belize, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Haiti.

However, the Comfort's port calls likely will not substantially enhance America's influence in the hemisphere. "It's hard for the U.S. to compete with Cuba and Venezuela in this way," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a pro-US policy-research group in Washington. "It makes us look like we're trying to imitate them. Cuba's doctors aren't docked at port for a couple days, but are in the country for years." (Bloomberg news agency, September 19, 2007.)

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Are just ad gimmicks you can choose from within a very narrow range of permissible governments and policy stances. You may have the very best of intentions in choosing them, but they are a gimmick to get you to buy, and whichever marketing strategy you fall for the product remains the same.

Because they subsidize their populations instead of the corporate campaign donors.

A wrongheaded and long-failed policy remains in effect because of the combination of spineless politicians, pandering politicians, and single-minded reactionaries.