The USA's medical and pharmaceutical industry have been nearly the only beacon for cures and treatments in the world. And this has happened without socialized medicine. Those countries that have employed socialized medicine, wait for the US to develop the drugs and treatments then they take them from us.
So to equate socialized medicine as a cure to improve medicine & treatments, is ridiculous and foolish. This is one of the tactics of the socialists. Let us take care of it and it will get better. Nothing has so far. Their solutions are worse than the problems.
Oh, Really...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3284995.stmCuba's struggling economy has been boosted by the successful export of its medical technology abroad, and by health tourism within the country.
Cuba's position in the developing world has always been something of a paradox.
A US delegation explores Havana to look for tourist destinations
Not all tourists to Cuba want sun and sand
Its low material living standards and crisis-ridden economy leads to a low per capita income, but President Fidel Castro's Caribbean blend of socialism has developed a public health system that places Cuba in another league altogether on human development indexes.
Basic health indicators are comparable to the achievements of welfare systems in western Europe.
Education, science and health, the cornerstone of the 1959 revolution, are closely linked together in Cuba's development of an advanced medical sector.
The export of pharmaceutical products, vaccines and biotechnology helps to pay for the growing costs of funding medical research and a free health system with comprehensive coverage.
Vaccines
In the 1980s millions of dollars were invested by the Cuban government in developing modern vaccines laboratories and a massive centre for biotechnology.
Cuba has invested millions in developing vaccines
Since the end of Soviet aid in 1989, and the acute economic crisis of the 1990s, Cuba has seen the excellence of its medico-scientific institutions as a strategic resource for developing new medical products for export.
The country's first breakthrough in medical research was its discovery and patenting of
meningitis-B vaccine in late 1980s.
It has been successfully exported to cope with epidemics in South American countries including Brazil and Argentina.
The vaccine has now been licensed to GlaxoSmithKline who will now market it in Europe and it is hoped eventually in the USA.
The Cuban vaccine is widely regarded as the more effective than Belgian and US-produced vaccines.
Cuba's cutting-edge products for neck and breast cancer have caused the biggest stir in the world of biotechnology.They have just been licensed to a German pharmaceutical company, with rights to develop the drug
TheraCIM h-R3 for the European market.
Also, the unique Cuban treatment for retinitis pigmentosa, often known as night blindness, has attracted many patients from Europe and North America,
Health tourism generates revenues of around $40m a year. Cuba maybe judged poor by material living standards, but its medical sector is a strong demonstration of its wealth in human resources.
ZW