It must be all the seafood they eat. Or maybe it's that glass of rum after each meal. Maybe smoing pure tobacco leaf in cigars also helps extend your lifespan as it doesn't contain the extra chemicals they use in cigarettes.
No it's the free healthcare.
They don't just have free Healthcare, they have one of the highest doctor to patient ratios in the world. It's amazing what they've accomplished despite how much they've been screwed by sanctions. Some dumb people point to Cuba as a failure of communism, but it's one of the greatest success stories if anything.
I've always wondered how Cuba would have been if it wasn't for the sanctions.
I'd be curious to see their obesity rates, as well. The USA has an enormously toxic relationship with food. Sugar is innately addictive and we've subsidized its production with the federal corn subsidy, which is part of the reason high fructose corn syrup is in practically everything. I'd be surprised if Cubans were anywhere near as physically unhealthy as the average American.
I've been to Cuba and I gotta admit that Cubans were generally pretty skinny. The only few overweight people I've seen were mostly older people in their 50's-60's.
A lot of Medium posts are soft-paywalled nowadays: http://archive.today/pgjoQ
Reagan designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, Obama removed it, Trump re-designated it, and Biden has done nothing but vote against UN resolutions calling for the end of the embargo, as recently as four months ago.
The United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution every year since 1992 demanding the end of the US economic embargo on Cuba, with the US and Israel being the only nations to consistently vote against the resolutions.
US government would say that Cuban socialism is a failure like they haven't spent decades trying to force it to fail.
Why then don't they lift the sanctions and prove beyond doubt that socialism hurts the Cuban people? Maybe they fear a prosperous Cuba, a successful socialist country right on their doorstep that would make voting Americans take notice.
The US government has pretty much admitted that's the case, and has been the direct goal of constantly trying to tear down (and assassinate) Castro and have Cuba fail since the 1950s.
EDIT: I'm saying the US has been seething for decades because Cuba has managed to exist as a socialist country right next door, and that's bad for the capitalist propaganda that socialism bad
Lift the sanctions, but please keep prohibiting US American tourism. This is one of the few "close by" (for me in Quebec) vacation place that still has a different vibe.
yeah but they can't have junkfood and plastic toys, it's literally totalitarianism.
I remember when Vice ran a documentary about some losers in Cuba trying to give themselves AIDS as a sign of protest against the government by bogging down the health system.
What the fuck… why would you do that to yourself?! What…?
AIDS can be controlled nowadays with proper equipment and medication. I guess the point is to waste Cuban's medical resources
gets aids to own the libs
moves back to america
Not sure why Cuba is singled out but like most countries with decent healthcare have a higher life expectancy than the US.
Probably because stark contrast between the richest country on Earth treating its people like shit, and country which is harshly embargoed, attacked and sabotaged by it for over 60 years and still having better healthcare. Key difference: capitalism vs socialism. For full picture a comparable, not embargoed and capitalist country should be thrown into comparison, Haiti for example.
Oh, it seems other sources say differently and the article has no source so I have no idea where it's from. I wouldn't have know if I didn't start looking at life expectancy in other countries.
According to World Bank Group from 2021 it seems Cuba is ranked 82th with 73.68 years in life expectancy while the US is 59th with 76.33 years.
Haiti is like 169th with 63.19 years but another comparable nation Costa Rica is 45th with 80.3 years.
United Nations data is only different by less than 0.5 years but ranks the US higher.
How the US treats it's citizens is shitty and I like how Cuba promotes coops but let's not spread misinformation.
That's fair. Don't you think the main point still stands? The US is abysmal for healthcare and is comparable to a much poorer nation which it embargoes?
I'm pretty sure that at this point everyone on earth knows the US has absolutely atrocious healthcare and even countries with a budget lower than it's poorest state can do better. Comparing it to Cuba doesn't really make any additional point in my opinion though.
American’s must not live on Earth then, because anytime I try to have this conversation I get the same, typical bullshit anti-socialism propaganda and American capitalist innovation arguments.
So no, everyone on Earth does NOT know that America’s health care is abysmal.
Hm, I think the kinds or categories of differences might be significant. Enough for legislators and policy makers, and I think enough for residents of different countries to get some perspective. If there's no context or the context is not well understood, how would one know if things can get better or worse in a meaningful way?
Enough for legislators and policy makers, and I think enough for residents of different countries to get some perspective.
We can’t have that: we can’t have the threat of a good example 
yeah fair point, do you think it would make sense to say that some have knowledge of it besides academics & people in think tanks? like politicians i guess
Politicians generally aren’t going to be interested in knowing it, because they generally answer to the donor class that wants the threat of a good example suppressed in the first place, and want our shitty for-profit healthcare system to stay the way it is: a cash cow for themselves. Most think tanks would also want it suppressed, because they’re funded & controlled by the capitalist class as well. Corporate media aren’t going to want to tell us that Cubans have a longer life expectancy, either, because they too are owned by the capitalists who don’t want us to know it.
I think the fact that US healthcare is a joke all over the world is a way better perspective than a comparison to Cuba's average lifespan (Even if it were accurate).
For the average person reading an article like this a headline saying "US healthcare is the laughing stock of the world" is a lot more effective title than "Cuba beat US average lifespan for the last 4 years".
If you want to seriously compare healthcare then comparing accessibility and outcomes would be a better stat but not to one specific country but all of them. But that would not make much of a news article, more of an actual study.
yeah, that's true, i guess what makes it a bit off is i'm accustomed to hearing awful things about the US.
Americans saying that Canadians go to the states for healthcare is projection for the fact they all go to Cuba.
yeah basically
Sounds like it's a good thing the embargo is in place then... Imagine all the unhealthy shit they could lower their life expectancy with if they got it from the USA.
One would argue that obesity is tipping the scales on the side of American deaths.
Even in North Corea (as say, if you are not against little Kim) is higher than in the EEUU, because in the EEUU if you got ill without money you are death.
Hey what is EEUU? I'm getting blanks on my search.
EDIT: It means amerika
Faux pas of a Spanish speaker, sorry, it certainly means Amerika (Estados Unidos, doble letters for the plurals, literally EEUU=US)
Ah ty, I'm learning spanish, is it supposed to be like the word "estadonidense"? i'm learning spanish from south america if that means anything in like word usage
"Estadounidense" is the demonym--so what you would call something from the US (the English equivalent would be American, possibly Yankee [although that has its own Spanish word, "yanqui"]). Other demonyms would be salvadoreño for Salvadorean, mexicano for Mexican, venezolano for Venezuelan, etc.
So, to answer your question: yes, the words are related; someone from los Estados Unidos (EEUU) would be estadounidense.
Edit to clarify:
Strictly speaking, the word "demonym" refers to people, but in the case of "estadounidense" it can refer to things and people. From English Wikipedia:
"Often, demonyms are the same as the adjectival form of the place, e.g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. However, they are not necessarily the same, as exemplified by Spanish instead of Spaniard or British instead of Briton."
huh, thanks for sharing! i learned something!
i think demon every time i read demonym and i'll never not see it
Lots of people understandably jump to the idea of "free healthcare" when trying to understand this phenomenon. While that is somewhat correct, there is lot more that needs to be done to achieve what Cuba has in terms of public health. The mode and amount of payment by patients is just one aspect of it. They also have train doctors of the appropriate quality and in the adquate quantity. Then they have to invest in the infrastructure and products that the health system needs which they manage despite crippling sanctions. There are a ton of other things as well, like ensuring that the rural areas have access to clinics and doctors which is one of the biggest of the countless failings of the Indian medical system.
I guess that the point I am trying to make is that you need a government that gives a shit about the people and considers them people rather than expendable workhorses for the owning class. Cuba, emerging out of a people's revolution, had this checked off. I bring this up because I feel even if Bernie had won the nomination and presidency he would have been able to only make marginal improvements to the American condition with his promise of a single-payer healthcare system which tackles only one small aspect of a deeply rotten healthcare system that the USA has. If he was somehow able to make any noticeable improvement without getting assassinated, they would be rolled back by whatever administration followed his kinda like how UK's NSA is slowly being strangulated as we speak.
You cannot have "free as in free speech" healthcare when the reigns of power are held by a wealthy minority.
Exactly, any actual freedom or democracy is only possible when the means of production are publicly owned. Only then can resources and labour be directed in a way that benefits majority of the people. It's impossible to have any meaningful freedoms when a handful of oligarchs runs the economy.
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