31–40 of 210 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet those Cuban doctors would give up their entire way of life, access to family members and the country they grew up in to move to the evil capitalist United States. Weird.
Weird how they do it after they became doctors and not before.
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…
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…
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. Ultimately, if you think it's such a good deal, I'm sure Cuba would let you defect and go to medical school for the opportunity to earn $30/month like she does in Cuba.
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 their loans, because they're just making enough to get by. (Some doctors even end up having to take on additional debt just to get through residency. That debt comes from the private market and has a higher interest rate than the unsubsidized Stafford loans).
This period lasts anywhere from 4-10 years, depending on your specialty. In the end, it's not unusual for a doctor who enters medical school in their mid-20s[0] and is not independently wealthy to expect to turn 40 before paying off their final medical school loan.
Medicine isn't the unbelievably, guaranteed lucrative field people think it is. It may have been in the past, but those days are long gone, and the expected lifetime earnings for physicians continues to drop each year, which means it takes even longer to pay off your debt.
[0] This is actually typical; most physicians, especially at top schools, don't enter medical school straight out of their undergraduate program
In Cuba often tourist dollars greatly outstrip the local economy. So you're ending up with a situation where qualified doctors are moving in to tourism - waiters, doormen - to earn more money.
Where did you learn about this? I'd like to investigate in more detail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet those Cuban doctors would give up their entire way of life, access to family members and the country they grew up in to move to the evil capitalist United States. Weird.
Weird how they do it after they became doctors and not before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet those Cuban doctors would give up their entire way of life, access to family members and the country they grew up in to move to the evil capitalist United States. Weird.
Yeah no kidding, because they have already acquired skills that will allow them a comfortable lifestyle in the US and don't have to deal with any of the downsides.
What is it far more likely is that those who actually live the glorious communist future would make an educated choice that being a janitor in America is preferable.
In Cuba often tourist dollars greatly outstrip the local economy. So you're ending up with a situation where qualified doctors are moving in to tourism - waiters, doormen - to earn more money.
Where did you learn about this? I'd like to investigate in more detail.
A quick Google turned up a few articles: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-04-17/news/950417013... (1995, but there are other sources).
Doctors and other higher ed degrees tend to have a strong English component, which is a plus in the tourist industry.
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…
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. Ultimately, if you think it's such a good deal, I'm sure Cuba would let you defect and go to medical school for the opportunity to earn $30/month like she does in Cuba.
Well, yes, they very explicitly have programs to take foreign students who get free or subsidized medical education in Cuba in return for practicing in Cuba for a certain amount of time.
That it isn't attractive for American doctors is unsurprising given the huge difference in economy, but it is attractive to a lot of people from developing countries, and it does a lot of good for the countries they come from, given that these doctors are meant to return, unlike e.g. the UK NHS which contributes to a lot of brain drain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point is probably this: > But the doctors get a small cut of that money, If the Cuban government were taking something like 10%-20% of salaray, you could see how that would wash. I presume they are taking much more
It's pretty common in professional services contexts for people to be charged out at least 3 or 4 times their salary.
> The World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, helped broker the deal. Under it, Brazil pays Cuba... nearly four times what Cuban doctors earn through the arrangement.
Google makes $1,200,000 per employee; a comparable average salary is then $300,000, which sounds on the high end of plausible if restricted only to engineer salaries (and it'd be a very top-heavy average), but implausibly high for a company-wide average.
TLDR: Nazism and Communism should be in the same bucket.