This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recently took a contingent of U.S. medical providers on a fact-finding tour to learn more about giving quality health care with limited financial resources.
And where did the group go to obtain that enlightenment?
Cuba.
"I'm not advocating trading our system for their system," Leavitt said of the communist country with socialized medicine. "I'm not [filmmaker] Michael Moore. But they have good people who demonstrate what you can do through innovation."
[Moore's 2007 movie "Sicko" featured universal health-care systems in several nations, including Cuba.]
Leavitt, whose consulting firm Leavitt Partners organized the trip for about 15 health-care professionals, said that while the U.S. has a superior system, providers always can learn new ideas from other countries.
The former Utah governor has taken similar tours in Europe, Africa, India and South and Central America. His clients include medical providers, product manufacturers and pharmacies.
Cuba boasts a system with a good record for positive outcomes with little economic resources, and Leavitt said those innovators can teach even the most sophisticated in the field some lessons.
Cuba, for example, has 14 medical schools serving a population of about 11 million. It not only has well-trained doctors in its own country, but also exports physicians throughout the world in exchange for other benefits.
For example, Leavitt noted, Cuba might send some doctors to Venezuela in exchange for oil.
The island nation has established neighborhood clinics that focus on preventive medicine and immunization. In some ways, that philosophy echoes Utah-based Intermountain Health Care.
"Hospitals in Cuba would not be passable according to U.S. standards," Leavitt said. "But they have found ways to provide quality health care despite a failing economy."
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What would Hamilton do? • Protests are planned across the nation to urge voters in the Electoral College to reject President-elect Donald Trump in their Dec. 19 vote — even though that is not legally possible in Utah and many other states.
In the Beehive State, for example, the law directs the electors to cast their ballots for the candidate who won Utah's popular vote.
State Director of Elections Mark Thomas says if a Utah elector picks someone other than the state winner, that vote is automatically set aside and another elector casts a ballot.
But my friend, Joe Fratto, a retired 3rd District Court judge, sent me a document that might be an argument for electors to revolt next Monday.
Given the circumstantial evidence that Russia may have tampered with the U.S. election to give an edge to Trump, Fratto dug up Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 68, written March 12, 1788, which outlines the "temporary and sole purpose" for the elector.
"Nothing was more to be desired, than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption," Hamilton wrote. "These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort with the most provident and judicious attention."
So should that be a reminder of Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence? He wrote that when any form of government becomes destructive of the concept that those in power act with the consent of the governed "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."