So, you ask, what happens when the price of oil collapses? I'm glad you ask that. When the bottom falls out of the oil market, all that "free" health care? Yeah, not so great any more...
Venezuela's 'socialist paradise' turns into a nightmare: medical shortages claim lives as oil price collapses
For Jose Perez, a Venezuelan taxi driver from Caracas, the hardest part about watching his wife die from heart failure was knowing just how easily she could have been saved.Yep. When your "free" health care depends on oil profits from companies you seized at the point of a gun, when the market fails, your entire economy collapses and takes the "free" health care with it. Notice no one is touting Venezuelan health care now. If the government hadn't seized those eeeeeevil oil companies, perhaps they might have weathered the drop in price better.
The surgeons at the Caracas University Hospital were ready to operate on 51-year-old Carmen, but because of the shortages of medicines now ravaging Venezuela, they had no stocks of the prosthetic artery that would have saved her life.
Oh, no, far better to kill the golden goose and eat for a night than to keep taking those golden eggs. Especially when you can deliver a "kick in the leg" to that meanie United States and show them up with your universal health care, right? Funny how no one's touting the success of "universal" health care (using Venezuela as a model) now.
Y'know, it's *almost* like actions have consequences or something...
That is all.
8 comments:
The second step towards disaster was when Chavez stopped paying the EU companies that operated his nationalized entities.
The technical folks pulled out and production spiraled downward.
When you can't deliver product to sell, it really doesn't matter what the price is.
Gerry
Gerry is right. Even if the price of oil hadn't dropped, Venezuela has been underfunding the nationalized companies that provide it with revenue in order to increase (or often just maintain) entitlements. It was all going to fail one way or another.
I am from Venezuela so I have first hand knowledge of the issue. Jay is right and so are the commentators. , Healthcare in Venezuela was on a tail spin before the oil collapse. The Government has absolute control of the foreign exchange and that bred inefficiency and corruption. Then, the cherry on top was to substitute the people that knew their stuff with those who were politically sided with the Revolution regardless if they knew what the flock they were doing.
My dear mother went to spend several months visiting relatives and her scores of Godchildren and I had to send her medication from the US via international shipper. And I am not talking strange and hard to find med, but blood pressure stuff you get at WalMart for $4. Amazingly the only thing she was able to find somewhat easily was insulin pens... but the rest of the insulin supplies? Yup, I had to send them with her other meds.
Venezuela has been suffering the inevitable, inescapable results of price controls for a while now, but the lefties in the media were reluctant to talk about it until they found something they dislike (cheap oil) to blame it on.
- Ponklemoose
Socialism is wonderful until you run out of other peoples money.
Roger nailed it...
+1 Roger
Can't wait for all those commie-loving comm/soc/lib/prog/soc/comm demos(BIRM)to run down to Cuba now that their friend at 1600 has opened up travel to that home of the best healthcare in the world.
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