"I think it’s better in Cuba! Where I injured my leg, a very serious injury, my Achilles tendon, and I went to a hospital, and I got an operation, and nobody gave me that examination that you get in the U.S., the first one you get, the examination of your wallet! To see if you’ve got medical coverage, and if you don’t you’re dumped off on the public hospital which may be across town, while you’re still bleeding. It was better in Cuba where I got that operation, and I didn’t have to pay a penny. I come back here in a cast, and I struggle to get an appointment, I say “I’ll pay, I’ll pay, you don’t understand I’ll pay” and they say “Oh we know you’ll pay, we don’t take any other kind of patient!”

“I hobble into his office and I get a new guy who tells me to leave it on another week, that’s fifty dollars, I can tell you I’ve never resented paying 50 more in my life. In a poor country, I got good medical coverage, in a rich one, I’m treated like a beggar, and a pariah. That’s where it’s better. That’s freedom.”

Apologies for the punctuation and grammar, it is a speech. Michael Parenti.