Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 210 posts

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#101

Post by [deleted] »

microcolonel wrote: post #74
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #4

You know I can't really feel their plight. Take this: >Hundreds of miles away, in Minas Gerais State, Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment. “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.” Is that not the point? The communist government allows anybody to attend their…

> Seems weird to come from a country which is explicitly organized around giving everybody a chance to succeed and then upon success saying, yeah but I don't like paying for it. Succeed at what? What success do they gain from being a doctor in a country which prevents them from being rewarded for it? Their returns are fixed by the government, and even when they're working overseas (earning way more money) the governm…

[deleted]

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#102

Post by colomon »

varjag wrote: post #58
colomon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, just for fun I punched this into a loan calculator. Assume the cost of their medical education is $200,000. (Everything here is USD.) A ten-year loan at 10% interest would require paying $2,643.01 a month. According to the article, the Cuban government is making about $2,700 a month on each doctor in Brazil. So even if you factor in free medical education, it's hard to argue the doctors still owe the Cuban gove…

However the cost of their medical education, while certainly substantial by Cuban standards, is nowhere near that.

I am willing to believe that, but I don't have any way to calculate what the number should be, so I took a generous estimate. (Average US post-medical school debt is $18x,000 according to a quick search I did.)

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#103

Post by selectodude »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #79
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people misera…

Military dictatorships are responsible for the atrocities you mention. Not communism. Evil people. Atrocities have also happened in capitalist counties - we're not placing the blame for those on the style of market the government chooses to adapt and it would be idiotic to do so.

There isn't a single communist country that wasn't a dictatorship. There are plenty of capitalist societies that aren't dictatorships.

I find these discussions always fly into the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#104

Post by thwarted »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #59
dpraburaj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually weird how many people in capitalist countries look at failed/failing communist states and think of them as utopias, all the while ignoring the plight of millions living there in poverty and with no clear path to a better standard of life. They should put their money where their mouth is and spend at least a few decades in such countries before criticising others who've made a choice to leave(for various…

How much of that is America's doing? If the embargo were lifted, do you still think Communist Cuba would be failing? Its poverty is a result of America's intolerance for different political systems, not the result of those political systems themselves.

The communist Utopia requires trade with another entity in order to maintain its Utopia? Who manages the trade between the countries? Are the members of a society that claims to be Communist actually so if that society at large is part of a free-market? This sounds like not getting rid of exploitation, but rather sweeping it under the rug and outsourcing it to a free-market entity.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#105

Post by chimeracoder »

tiggybear wrote: post #78
chimeracoder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure American doctors would pay down their debt quite quickly if they lived like a Cuban doctor and nearly their entire paycheck went to school loans. After medical school, doctors still aren't qualified or licensed to practice - they need to go through residency first, which pays really poorly (in some cases, less than the equivalent of minimum wage). During that time, doctors aren't going to be paying down th…

My friends that are residents in podunk Illinois are making 65k/year. It goes very far there. Yea, if you break down all their on call hours and shit, it's not very much hourly. But they still make more than most people in their small city.

> My friends that are residents in podunk Illinois are making 65k/year. It goes very far there.

$65K/year is significantly more than the average amount that a first-year resident (intern) makes ($51K/year). Also, medicine is one field where it's often much more lucrative to work in small towns than large cities, so that's the place where the discrepancy would be expected to be the largest.

$51K/year is not a lot, though. That comes out to $980/week, and residents generally now work 80 hours/week (it used to be significantly longer - 100 or more). That comes out to $12.25/hour, which is actually less than minimum wage in many cities. And again, that's the average.

Whether or not residents are literally making less than minimum wage, though, is not really the point: the point is that residents aren't making the kind of money that would make a significant dent in their debt, so they don't really start paying off the principal on their loans until they're done with residency (and even fellowships), which is a long time for interest to compound.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#106

Post by BadassFractal »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #59
dpraburaj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually weird how many people in capitalist countries look at failed/failing communist states and think of them as utopias, all the while ignoring the plight of millions living there in poverty and with no clear path to a better standard of life. They should put their money where their mouth is and spend at least a few decades in such countries before criticising others who've made a choice to leave(for various…

How much of that is America's doing? If the embargo were lifted, do you still think Communist Cuba would be failing? Its poverty is a result of America's intolerance for different political systems, not the result of those political systems themselves.

So, communism is great, it's just didn't work that one time because of the US?

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#107

Post by oh_sigh »

ue_ wrote: post #82
AutomationTool wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to pay large amounts of money for education and you don't have to pay large amounts of money to get a decent job. You need to get out of your echo chamber.

I'm posting right now on what is by and large a forum hostile to anti-capitalist thinking; this is the very opposite of me being in an echo chamber. Many "decent" jobs require at least a university degree, which almost always entails taking out a loan. So while you don't have to "pay" large amounts of money, you may need to loan it and then pay it back later.

The echo chamber you're in is your understanding of 'decent jobs'. No, you don't need to go to university to have a decent job. There are tons of self-made people with no university education, working in the trades or by starting a small business.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#108

Post by dlokshin »

baby wrote: post #68
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people misera…

What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? People are dying because of this shit too.

45 million people died over 4 years in Mao's Great Leap Forward from starvation and execution. 10+ million people died in Stalin's gulags alone. Are you really trying to equate this with healthcare in America?

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#109

Post by nradov »

jondubois wrote: post #41
nradov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is explicitly organized around keeping the Castros and their cronies in power. Propaganda aside, giving everybody a chance to succeed was never an actual organizing principle.

I think that there is a bit of truth to both arguments. There are a lot of very smart people in the west who never had the chance to study medicine (there seem to be a lot of American janitors with high IQs...) - Under a communist regime, those who are mentally able to become a doctor can generally do so; in the west there are many financial and social hurdles. Communism removes the element of luck from the system. I…

That was never how it worked in communist countries. Admission to medical schools and other advanced education was often based more on political reliability (Party membership), family connections, and outright bribes. Sure some people made it on merit, but communism never removed the element of luck from the system.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#110

Post by jrochkind1 »

microcolonel wrote: post #74
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #4

You know I can't really feel their plight. Take this: >Hundreds of miles away, in Minas Gerais State, Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment. “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.” Is that not the point? The communist government allows anybody to attend their…

> Seems weird to come from a country which is explicitly organized around giving everybody a chance to succeed and then upon success saying, yeah but I don't like paying for it. Succeed at what? What success do they gain from being a doctor in a country which prevents them from being rewarded for it? Their returns are fixed by the government, and even when they're working overseas (earning way more money) the governm…

> What success do they gain from being a doctor in a country which prevents them from being rewarded for it?

Hmm, do you think most doctors in the U.S. are only in it for monetary rewards, and don't find any other part of the job rewarding? I don't think I want that doctor.

Post reply on HN