La Verdad, Trump floats “Cuba care corridor” to address U.S. primary care shortage, April 1, 2026, by Clara Desvarío
Palm Beach, FL — At a private dinner with donors last week, President Donald Trump reportedly suggested that the United States could address its growing primary care shortage by sending Americans to Cuba for routine care — perhaps as part of vacations — and recruiting Cuban primary care providers to practice in underserved U.S. communities.
According to a source present at the event, Trump raised the idea in a conversation with a Cuban American émigré donor, describing Cuba’s neighborhood-based care model as “very powerful.”
“They’ve got doctors on every block—almost,” Trump said, according to the attendee. “We could learn from that. Maybe we send some patients there – beach vacation plus doctor visits. People like vacations.”
The remarks come as the U.S. faces a projected shortage of up to 48,000 primary care physicians by the early 2030s, with rural and low-income areas disproportionately affected.
A policy analyst, Dr. Elena Márquez of the Institute for Comparative Health Systems, noted that Cuba’s system assigns a physician–nurse team to roughly 600–700 residents and emphasizes prevention and home visits.
“Cuba has one of the most intensive primary care models in the world,” Márquez said. “The question is not whether it works—it clearly does on many population measures—but whether it can be meaningfully translated across political and economic systems.”
No formal proposal has been released, and administration officials declined to comment on whether the idea is under active consideration.
Comment:
By Jim Kahn, M.D., M.P.H.
It is hard not to read this with a mix of fascination, irony, and sadness.
Fascination, because the underlying observation is not wrong: Cuba has built a primary care system that is deeply embedded in communities, prevention-oriented, and accountable for defined populations. For decades, health policy analysts have pointed to exactly these features as missing in the U.S. system.
Irony, because the same administration now entertaining “medical vacations” to Cuba has, in practice, supported policies that weaken primary care at home—through underfunding (eg of Medicaid), fragmentation, and persistent neglect of workforce development and payment reform.
And sadness, because the idea implicitly concedes a failure: that we might need to send Americans abroad to access the kind of continuous, community-based care that should be foundational in a high-income country. And sadness, too, that the US has in recent years sabotaged Cuba’s economy including health care through aggressive oil embargoes and other actions.
Would such a primary care initiative be worth considering? I’m ambivalent.
On one hand, expanding access – by any means – has appeal, especially for underserved populations. On the other, importing care from a country whose economy we have long viciously sought to undermine raises vexing ethical and geopolitical questions. Recruiting Cuban clinicians risks exacerbating health workforce pressures there, even as we fail to fix our own.
Ultimately, the proposal underscores a more basic point: we do not lack for strong medical care models worth emulating. What we lack is the political will to implement them. Is this the start of a stunning shift – improving the US by learning from other countries?
P.S. In finalizing today’s April Fools’ post, I saw recent NY Times reporting on the dire health consequences for Cuba’s people of US oil blockade policies. That is no laughing matter; indeed it is inexcusable.
https://healthjusticemonitor.org…
Stay informed! Subscribe to the McCanne Health Justice Monitor to receive regular policy updates via email, and be sure to follow them on Twitter @HealthJustMon.