Cuba health system nears collapse as Havana courts Moscow, US sanctions and controls keep scarcity profitable for insiders

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mises.org

Cuban families receive ‘Made in Mexico’ essentials as crisis worsens - WTOP News wtop.com

Suffocating an Island: What the US Blockade Is Doing to Cuba fairobserver.com

Putin meets Cuban foreign minister in Moscow, says US restrictions are 'unacceptable' news.yahoo.com

Cuba is approaching the kind of systemic failure that propaganda can’t bandage: doctors warn the island’s health system is “on the verge of collapse,” with the blunt forecast that “many will die,” according to the Miami Herald. In parallel, Havana is leaning into geopolitical theater—meeting Vladimir Putin in Moscow—while Washington tightens sanctions and threatens further pressure.

The Miami Herald’s reporting describes a medical system strained by shortages of medicines, supplies, and staff. The grimness is not a mystery of fate; it is the predictable output of a command economy that treats prices as ideological statements and professionals as state property. When the state fixes prices below reality, it doesn’t abolish scarcity—it reallocates it to those with access, connections, and hard currency.

Enter Russia, offering symbolism and selective relief. Yahoo News reports Putin met Cuba’s foreign minister; for authoritarian regimes, “solidarity” is often a photo opportunity with a limited credit line attached. Moscow’s capacity to rescue anyone is constrained by its own fiscal and war priorities; what it can provide is diplomatic cover and the occasional shipment that can be televised.

On the other side of the chessboard, US policy continues to operate on the assumption that punishment is strategy. A Mises Institute commentary calls US actions toward Cuba “criminal,” arguing that sanctions worsen civilian suffering while leaving the political class insulated. Whatever one thinks of that framing, the incentive structure is hard to dispute: broad sanctions rarely depose entrenched regimes; they do, however, raise the value of political access and deepen black markets.

Washington claims to target the regime, but restrictions on trade and finance interact with Cuba’s internal controls to strengthen the very class they are supposed to weaken. Scarcity becomes a rent stream. The party and military-linked networks that control import channels and dollarized stores can ration, resell, and privilege their own—while ordinary Cubans get the lecture about sacrifice.

Meanwhile, the “free” health system—one of the revolution’s signature exports—now faces a reality check in antibiotics, syringes, electricity, and basic logistics. Doctors leaving the country are not a moral failure; they are an exit from a system that underpays and overcontrols them while demanding loyalty.

Cuba’s collapse is therefore not just a humanitarian story; multiple layers of coercion compound. Central planning creates shortages; political privilege allocates them; sanctions amplify them; and great-power posturing supplies the soundtrack. The population, as usual, pays for everyone else’s principles.