[Sandokan]

Many of the Cuban doctors that accept to work overseas do so as a way to escape from the miserable life in the island. But in many of those countries the doctors find out they are imprisoned in their new assignments. They are send to work in remote communities and restricted means of transportation, and under surveillance all the time. If there are changes in their plans not consistent with the regime guidelines would normally lead to involvement of the police. Because they live their lives in servitude to work in those countries, many doctors in such medical missions defect to freedom. About 8,000 health workers, many of them physicians, have left Cuba in the last ten years.

[Kman]

Reading Igor's justifications for human slavery was pretty funny.

[Jingles]

The regime has acknowledged that there is a shortage of doctors and nurses in Cuba. The real per capita of doctors in Cuba, with have a population of11.3 million, is one doctor per 465 people.

I'd like to see your source for that, since according to the WHO, Cuba provides a doctor for every 170 residents:

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

Anyway, like Decky said, they're paid a fair enough amount. Considering also that everything in Cuba from cigarettes to bus fares is heavily subsidised by the government, unlike here.

[Social_Critic]

Decky seems to have confused payment per hour in the UK versus payment per month in Cuba.

The issue is fairly simple: Cuban doctors like to flee when they are able to do so. When they arrive in Venezuela, they are stripped of all documents they may use to flee - and yet they are known to flee in large numbers. They are also discouraged from having social contacts with others who may help them flee (I lived in Venezuela until recently, and I was unable to get a single Cuban doctor to visit my residence, even though I'm a free Cuban and in some cases we were related or had gone to the same school, etc).

I think it's a pretty good idea for Cubans to develop a business line selling medical services. When communism falls and the Castros are history, some of their ideas can be applied to enhance the population's income earning capacity, so this should be nurtured and followed through - but it's unethical to develop an industry using people as if they were slaves, and this is what the Castros do.

[USB]

With due respect, my good friend Social Critic, Fidel has all the last aces in his sleeves to file a personal injury lawsuits in America or any Latin America to those doctors who flee from Cuba as just compensation for all the free services that they enjoy including free education but he just shrugs them off. They are just the misguided ones.

If I am not entrusted with responsibility to lead the Communist Party of the PHilippines-New People's Army to wage the kind of armed struggle that Fidel and Che did, I should have been in Cuba enjoying the fruits of an efficient cooperative farm and socialized health care. I used to pay 6% of my income to cover my house rent in Cuba during the 80s.

[Sandokan]

I'd like to see your source for that, since according to the WHO, Cuba provides a doctor for every 170 residents:

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

From the same article that you quote

Domestic shortage

Nevertheless, in Cuba, where people have become accustomed to a free comprehensive healthcare system, this huge outflow of doctors has sparked complaints and grumbles.

These days, though, Cubans have to make do with fewer doctors and are sometimes forced to queue to get medical attention http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4583668.stm

It is not the same number of graduated doctors that the actual number of doctors serving the people in Cuba.

while nearly 30,000 health professionals, mostly doctors, are volunteering in 69 countries. Cuba has over 70,000 physicians, of which some 25,000 are abroad. http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/cuba-hea ... -faqs.html

According to this story in The New York Times, “6,000 medical professionals, many of them physicians, have left Cuba in the last six years.” http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/08/a-d ... tates.html

Cuban doctors have been fleeing the island since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, but the pace has intensified in the last 10 years.

December 6: The vice-minister of Public Health, Joaquín García, said that, "the reorganization of medical consulting offices to compensate for the doctors who went on internationalist missions has not worked properly." "The presence of doctors and nurses in the medical offices has not been guaranteed as promised," added García in the Roundtable television program, where the minister of health, José Ramón Balaguer, was also present. This is the first time that authorities recognize publicly the existence of vacancies as a result of doctors and nurses being sent abroad, as well as its impact on public health. (EER, 6/12/07) http://www.cubasource.org/publications/ ... 12da_e.asp

Cuban medical care has never recovered from Castro's takeover, when the country’s health care ranked among the world's best. He won the support of the Cuban people by promising to replace Batista’s dictatorship with free elections, and to end corruption. Once in power he made himself dictator and instituted Soviet-style Communism. Cubans not only failed to regain their democratic rights, their economy plunged into centrally planned poverty.