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Revolutionary Cuba
In its early years, Castro made a clean break with world capitalism that turned Cuba into a brothel. He nationalized US industries, carried out land reform, closed the Mafia-owned casinos and ended longstanding, systemic corruption, replacing the former system with state-controlled socialism, a planned economy.
After the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba modestly changed of necessity, allowing a limited amount of free enterprise, including in agriculture to increase output, relieve food shortages, and neutralize the country's black market by having more readily available affordable food supplies.
Small retailing and light manufacturing were also permitted as private for-profit businesses. In the mid-1990s, 100% foreign commercial ownership was allowed in joint ventures, up from the 1982-established 49%.
Social services have been Cuba's hallmark, its most notable successes, especially in areas of education and health care. Besides constitutionally mandated rights, Cuba (in 1983) adopted the Public Health Law that obligates the state permanently to assure, improve, and protect its citizens' health, including those rehabilitating from physical or mental disabilities.
In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) called Cuba's health system a "model for the world." It cited its extensive system of family doctors and sophisticated tertiary care facilities, its emphasis on nutrition and preventive care, its low infant mortality rate at 6 per 1,000 population that equals the developed world's average and betters America's at 7%.
Cuba also matches America's life expectancy, has double the number of physicians per 1,000 population, and an overall lower mortality rate. Moreover, it has the most complete infant immunization coverage in the developing world and an exemplary national health and nuitrition education program, emphasizing chemical-free, non-GMO, organically grown fresh produce which it planned to have enough of to feed its entire population in a climate thought inhospitable to grow chemical-free food. Cuba proved it could be done.
It also delivers top quality health care at miniscule cost compared to America with, by far, the world's highest per capita expense, because corporate providers game the system for profit, regardless of quality of care delivered.
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