The Guardian has a very interesting article about how Cuba is managing their part of the Coronavirus crisis. It does not make for calming or easy reading. Cuba’s healthcare system has all but collapsed. Despite a claimed very high doctor to population ratio Cuba’s state run healthcare is an absolute mess.

I’m quite prepared to believe that Cuba has been hit hard by Covid, lots of countries have been hit bad by it. But I don’t believe that this is the whole story. Cuba’s healthcare system was in a mess before Covid. It could not provide proper treatment for its citizens even before covid hit the island nation.

The problem with Cuba’s healthcare system cannot solely be put down to US sanctions against the Communist regime there, the way the Cuban government manages healthcare must also be blamed. When you have a monopoly supplier of healthcare run by a government that is profoundly ideological then you are bound to get the sort of things that afflict Cuba’s healthcare system. Things such as medicine shortages, failed supply lines for consumables like Oxygen, a decline in clinical standards will all be familiar to anyone who understands how Communist societies operate.

Whilst Covid has hit Cuba hard, Cuba’s healthcare problems started long long before Covid appeared. They are problems that are inherent in state run healthcare. A healthcare system that suffers from lack of competition or even accountability, will not be one that puts the patient first or even provide the most effective treatment for the patient. Whilst the UK National Health Service is in no way as awful as the Cuban healthcare system, it does share with it many of the inherent problems such as producer capture that afflict both the Cuban healthcare system and indeed all nationalised industries. We should look at the collapse of the Cuban healthcare system and ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to our own, even if that means tearing down the NHS and rebuilding it in a form suitable for the 21^st century rather than the mid 20^th.