The following report discusses Cuban doctors who practice medicine in Brazil. Like all Cuban professionals, these doctors do not practice privately, but serve the Cuban state. And the state requires that they surrender 70% of their salary to advance the cause of Cuban socialism.
Up until now the shakedown of Cuban doctors in Brazil has been facilitated by the Pan-American Health Organization — that is, one of those wonderful trans-national NGOs has assists the Communist regime in Havana steal from Cuban doctors.
The issue has made the news recently because President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has vowed to require that all doctors be paid a full salary. However, he can’t implement his decision until he is inaugurated in January, and Cuba plans to pull out all its doctors by then.
Many thanks to José Atento for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:11 | More than 100 Cubans from the program “More Physicians” | |
| 00:14 | have reached the courts to receive the full salary paid by Brazil. | |
| 00:19 | To maintain the agreement with Cuba, the government-elect demands payment of 100%. | |
| 00:26 | As the Havana Regime refused, the physicians will go back to Cuba. | |
| 00:32 | Dr. Orelvi arrived in Brazil in 2014. | |
| 00:36 | He started clinic work in São Paulo, but was later transferred to Viamão, near Porto Alegre. | |
| 00:46 | Since then he has worked there as family doctor. | |
| 00:50 | When he started in the program he was told that 70% of his salary | |
| 00:54 | would be confiscated by the Cuban government. | |
| 00:59 | To come here, everyone had to sign a contract with this particular clause. | |
| 01:06 | Dr. Orelvi married a Brazilian, which allows him to remain in Brazil, | |
| 01:14 | but he cannot work as physician in Brazil, | |
| 01:17 | as his diploma is not registered with any Brazilian Council of Medicine. | |
| 01:21 | I have family here, so let us see what will happen. | |
| 01:26 | The way Cubans are treated in Brazil attracted the attention of president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, | |
| 01:33 | who conditioned the permanence of these physicians in the country | |
| 01:37 | to a capacity exam, freedom for them to bring their families, | |
| 01:43 | and full salary paid to the professionals. | |
| 01:47 | Today, from the R$11,000 paid monthly, they receive only between 25% and 30%. | |
| 01:54 | The difference goes to the Cuban government, via the Pan-American Health Organization, | |
| 02:02 | an organization under the WHO. | |
| 02:05 | No other professional in Brazil keeps just one fourth of his salary. | |
| 02:10 | Dr. Maristela Basso, professor of International Law at the University of São Paulo, | |
| 02:15 | says the treatment given to the Cubans goes against legal principles and human dignity. | |
| 02:22 | It violates all international humanitarian principles and all human rights treaties, | |
| 02:30 | which guarantee the dignity of work and fair remuneration, neither present in the case of the Cubans. | |
| 02:38 | Ariosque Ramirez left the Program last year, | |
| 02:42 | and has no doubt about the regime imposed onto the Cuban professionals. | |
| 02:48 | It is slave work. The problem is not the salary being confiscated, | |
| 02:53 | the problem are the conditions which are imposed, | |
| 02:58 | the lie imposed on us by the Cuban government. | |
| 03:03 | He says he was forced by the Cuban government | |
| 03:06 | to work for three years in Venezuela and three additional years in Brazil, | |
| 03:11 | with the major portion of his salary confiscated by the Cuban government. | |
| 03:16 | Ariosque says that when he questioned the payment and work system, | |
| 03:20 | authorities in the country threatened to remove his medical credentials | |
| 03:24 | and turn him into a sugar-cane cutter in Cuba. | |
| 03:27 | He was forced to quit the program and request asylum to Brazil to avoid returning to Cuba. | |
| 03:35 | He has been separated from his wife and two daughters for eight years. | |
| 03:40 | Cuba is an “Island of Zombies”, as they say here. | |
| 03:46 | People live, breathe, but they are dead without dreams. | |
| 03:52 | Bolsonaro has offered asylum to the physicians who want to remain in Brazil. | |
| 03:57 | The problem is that he can only do something in January [when he takes over], | |
| 04:02 | and the Cuban government plans to remove all professionals from Brazil before Christmas. | |
| 04:08 | This lawyer represents a group of Cuban physicians | |
| 04:12 | who went to Court to receive the full payment offered by the Brazilian government. | |
| 04:19 | The main complaint of the Cuban physicians who work in Brazil | |
| 04:23 | is, indeed, the unequal treatment, anti-isonomic. | |
| 04:27 | The Cuban physicians do not receive the same treatment given to the ones coming from abroad, | |
| 04:33 | i.e., foreign physicians and Brazilians who graduate overseas. | |
| 04:40 | Created in 2013, under Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, | |
| 04:44 | the program “More Physicians” presented itself as an attempt to improve | |
| 04:48 | the quality of medical professionals and take medical care to remote areas of the country. | |
| 04:56 | From the 18,240 openings, about 8,300 are occupied by Cuban professionals, | |
| 05:05 | representing 45% of those involved in the program. |
This has only been possible because Brazil has been governed by PT (Workers’ Party), which is leftist, pro-marxist, and one of the key participants of the so called “Forum of São Paulo”, an evil alliance of similar parties in Latin America. For them, everything that is useful to promote their cause (for example, gender ideology, Islam instead of Christianity,…) is acceptable, or at least, tolerable… This is a worldwide danger! God protect us from such evil minds, and give us wisdom and strength to resist!
Actually, the enforcement provisions are a bit overtly draconian, but the principle is not significantly different from the so-called single-payer medical option pushed by the left Democrats.
The regime of a medical student in US schools is demanding: highly competitive entrance requirements, long hours of study, and man-killing exploitative hours as an intern and resident. Doctors specializing in a field spend even more hours in this killing schedule.
What single-payer systems do is prevent competition for the services of these doctors, and require them, if they work as doctors, to work at salaries far below the salaries they can receive based on theirs skills. So, the initial years of the single-payer system will piggyback by dragooning the actual dedication put in by these doctors.
In the future, of course, why would a medical student put in that type of effort, when they could get as good or better by simply rising in the ranks of the bureaucracy? So, in the future, my heart-valve replacement surgery will be done by a student who couldn’t hack it in the Young Communist League. Enjoy my posts while you can!!!
In New South Wales the Department of Health employs more bureaucrats than it does health workers and ancillaries in its hospitals.
That’s not just doctors, nurses, physios, etc., but cleaners and kitchen staff.
So much of the health budget gets burned up by the bureaucrats that hospitals find that can’t do things like pay their laundry bills.
That’s what bureaucracy gets you.
On the Federal level in Australia it’s even worse. More than 10,000 bureaucrats employed by a Dept that owns a whole 2 hospitals, one of which is staffed by South Australian Govt employed staff, and the other by Tasmanian Govt employed staff.
So what do those bureaucrats do with their time and money? The handful of doctors employed by the Fed Dept of Health aren’t actually practicing medicine, ditto the handful of any other health workers. They just polish chairs and shove paper around.
I hate what they have done to my healthcare and hate what they have done to me. I hate when I get a black doctor and have to wonder if he is truly qualified or an ‘affirmative action’ appointee. And if you have a brain in your head you DO have to wonder.
It pays to spend time learning about your own health issues.
There is a lot of information out there; just avoid the MSM docs and orgs as you search. For instance, the American Heart Association’s diet recommendations will not contribute to your well-being.
Slavery, I think, is the wrong word. If the Cuban physicians are only allowed to keep a quarter of their earnings, that is serfdom. A Medieval farmer only got to keep a fifth of his produce. Much as Medieval serfs were tied to their land, the Cuban doctors are kept tied to Cuba by family hostages. Serfdom, like slavery, is a form of bondage.