Return to Cuba or die: healthcare woes ended this refugee's American Dream

[Judi Lynn]

Return to Cuba or die: healthcare woes ended this refugee's American Dream

Julie Schwietert Collazo


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Esnart hopes to find more help from strangers than he has from the
US government. Photograph: Julian Esnart
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Julian Esnart Wilson needs to take costly medicine every day to stay alive, but is not covered by Medicaid. Now, he hopes to crowdfund a flight back to Havana

Thursday 5 March 2015 07.15 EST

“We advise you to return to Cuba if you don’t want to die”. That was the message Julian Esnart Wilson, a Cuban refugee living in the United States, was given by a congressional staffer he had reached out to for help. A debilitating illness and lack of health care coverage were about to end his American Dream, less than a year after he had arrived in the country.

I met Esnart last weekend, through a family connection, and interviewed him about his experience. He told me he had not been blasé about his health problems when he decided to leave Cuba in July 2014. He had disclosed to the interviewer at the United States Interests Section in Havana that he had been diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2007, and had received a liver transplant. He made a point of raising concerns about his condition.

He asked how the US healthcare system worked, saying that in Cuba he received quarterly checkups and free medication. “The official looked at me with a sweet smile and said the medicine would be expensive. I asked if I could take my medicines with me and he said he needed to confer with the consul. He stepped out of the room. When he returned, he took my fingerprints and congratulated me: ‘You’re going to the United States’”, Esnart told me.

He never did get an answer to his question that day.

When he arrived in Miami last summer, things didn’t get off to a good start. The day he landed, his wife told him she wanted to end their relationship. On his first night in the US, Esnart found himself calling upon a friend of his sister, asking for a favor: Could he spend the night at her house?

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/05/cuba-healthcare-refugee-american-dream

[Doctor_J]

1. A uniquely American experience.

Of course he could go on the exchange and get his W-2 and apply for subsidies and then find an in-network primary physician and hope there are generic drugs...

Still the most expensive...still the worst.