Of course there is - it just isn't likely to be very good health care.
Is Castro Already Dead?
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Of course there is - it just isn't likely to be very good health care.
Please name a country that has free health care.
No - the UK NHS is based on the idea of "free at the point of delivery".
We can but hope.
That's not fair you changed your post so this looks as if I didn't answer you! Your original post said something like "So health care in the UK is free?"
That all looks like English, but I don't understand what it is supposed to mean. Please explain.
hgc
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You're a rare treat, BP. Your Frist-like remote medical diagnostic expertise serves your pre-cooked political ideas perfectly. When you actually know something about the state of healthcare in Cuba, get back to me.
Sorry - I'd hoped I'd changed it fast enough that it wouldn't get read (and replied to). Stop typing so fast!
Tanja
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I would not be surprised if he was dead/ dying.
Back in autumn 1999, I was living in Croatia and the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was dying. The government officials were still saying to the media that he was not very ill, that he was just having check-ups etc.
On the other hand, the choir I was singing in was asked to practice the music we were going to sing at his funeral, and we had several rehearsals during that time (I remember learning Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem). It is widely believed that Tudjman was in a coma for weeks, and that he died at least a week before his official date of death...
Back in autumn 1999, I was living in Croatia and the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was dying. The government officials were still saying to the media that he was not very ill, that he was just having check-ups etc.
On the other hand, the choir I was singing in was asked to practice the music we were going to sing at his funeral, and we had several rehearsals during that time (I remember learning Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem). It is widely believed that Tudjman was in a coma for weeks, and that he died at least a week before his official date of death...
I don't know how else to put it - it's a phrase that seems quite clear to me. Perhaps if you do a search on 'NHS and "free at the point of delivery"' you'll find some references that can explain it in different words.
I just note that a lot of information seems to be missing from this report; even I can tell that. Seems odd that all these bad things are happening to him, but the doctors don't say why - lots of events, but no stated causes. You'd think they'd be trying to make sure they don't get blamed for killing El Jefe, by claiming, "His arteries are very frail," or "Stitches often fail after surgery on a patient this old..." or, "He has had massive doses of antibiotics, but patients of his age often don't respond well..."
Anyway, do you think he's getting top-flight care?
Does that mean there is some point where it is not free?
Okay, you were answering the question I edited over, which was, as I recall, "Are you saying your health care in the UK is free?" And your answer appears to be "no," so there's not much point in beating that dead horse further.
So, let's get back to the other question I asked: Please name a country that has free health care.
Just to short-circuit any unnecessary sidetracking:
NHS = National Health Service
Point of Delivery = Locale at which services are rendered
So "free at point of delivery" meants that while the NHS is funded with taxes paid by the citizenry, a patient pays nothing to the doctor and nothing more in taxes than he would have paid anyway.
In my opinion, it is therefore, not free, which is BPSCG's point. Whether it is less costly or at least more cost-effective than any other healthcare system such as that in the U.S., is another matter altogether.
NHS = National Health Service
Point of Delivery = Locale at which services are rendered
So "free at point of delivery" meants that while the NHS is funded with taxes paid by the citizenry, a patient pays nothing to the doctor and nothing more in taxes than he would have paid anyway.
In my opinion, it is therefore, not free, which is BPSCG's point. Whether it is less costly or at least more cost-effective than any other healthcare system such as that in the U.S., is another matter altogether.
I don't know of any.
Castro was a fool to opt against colostomy with the possibility of a second surgery to reconnect things in the future, and his surgeons were negligent in even giving him that option. He had an active infection of the bowel that spread to include the abdominal cavity. According to the article:
presence of infection = poor healing
presence of feces = poor healing
infection + feces = really poor healing
In that milieu, a piece of bowel was sewn to the rectum. That closure point was destined to open up.
I hope that his surgeons strongly recommended against this and provided their reasons as to why. If they did, and he simply rejected them, then he is now lying in a bed that he made.
I also hope that the second surgery included a colostomy rather than repeating the reconnection. If not, the surgeons really are incompetent unless Castro threatened them with execution if they did so. However, even if they did do a colostomy, there is no guarantee of him pulling through at that point. He's old and he was in a weakened state from his original illness, the first surgery, and then from the complications. That's how he went into a second surgery in the presence of a second really bad infection.
I'm not familiar with the prosthesis, so I can't comment on that.
The abdominal wound is probably leaking so much because it is opening up, it was only partially closed because they plan return visits to the OR, his docs have opened it up, or it was left open after surgery. The opening up would not be a surprise because the same reasons why the suture line on his bowel opened up would apply to the abdominal incision. One would hope that they recognized this complication, too, and dealt with it. If the other possibilities apply, there are legitimate reasons for opening up an incision or leaving it open in these cases. Sometimes the bowel walls themselves become so inflamed and swollen that the incision cannot be closed. So the fact that it is leaking so much in and of itself doesn't prove incompetence, but certainly other aspects of his care suggest it.
If things have really gone like this, I'd say that the odds of him pulling through are really low.
ETA: So Castro may have received incompetent care, he may have made bad decisions based on information that wasn't conveyed to him by his surgeons, or he may have disregarded the information that he was given and made really poor decisions that have led to his current condition.
Or this report is complete BS, and he's just fine and laughing at all of us speculating on his condition.
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hgc
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Knowing who he is, I would guess that he's in the best equipped hospital in the country and that his doctors are competent. Other than that, I can't say if he's getting top-flight care. Based on his choice against the colostomy bag, I'd also guess that the patient's decision has more to do with his declining condition than the quality of medical care. But then, when an 80 year old dies of natural causes, I don't jump to any conclusions.
Tony
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Yeah, because for-profit healthcare keeps people from dying.
DanishDynamite
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I don't see that it makes much difference whether he is dead already. It seems fairly certain that he will be dead soon, afterall.
I really wonder what will happen in Cuba when this fact can no longer be denied.
I really wonder what will happen in Cuba when this fact can no longer be denied.