Castro Ditches His Own Economic Ideas

Investor's Business Daily reported a humorous spectacle in Cuba during Fidel Castro's severe health scares. The domestic policy cornerstone of the Castro Regime has been their universal health care coverage, internationally lauded and locally flaunted.

However, on while Castro was in critical condition he refused to use his own health care system. Instead, he brought in (lo and behold) free market physicians and equipment. IBD:

Spanish medics also brought in new capitalist-world medical equipment, part of a series of such shipments the Cuban government has been quietly provisioning for Castro since June, well before he ceded power to his brother, Raul...

But what a sorry spectacle, given the claims of Castro and his apologists that communist health care is a humane and superior alternative to that in the capitalist world of double-entry bookkeeping, where health care is not free but something of value.

The president of Madrid's regional government, Esperanza Aguirre, swiftly spotted the hypocrisy of Castro's special treatment. Castro supporters, she said, "practically justified dictatorship, and the lack of the most elemental human rights," by "claiming to have an extraordinary health service."