The country’s attempt at health care reform is like paying for a house that is falling apart, a group of Cuban medical students told a crowd of mainly students at Tydings Hall Thursday night.

“It’s hard to fix everything with one single reform,” said Aníbal Socarrás, one of the Cuban students. “It’s only fixing insurance, in order to renovate the whole system, [it] has to be changed from the ground up.”

In the midst of a month-long tour to universities around the country, Socarrás, 30, and fellow student Yenaivis Ascencio, 23, spoke to a full lecture hall to provide a firsthand account as Cuban citizens who deal with health care issues.

With the aid of translators, Ascencio and Socarrás answered questions from the audience, which ranged from topics of health care to material possessions.

“They aren’t aliens; they’re human beings who need housing, clothing, food,” Socarrás said. “They need to buy everything, and it’s normal to want to have something. The whole world wants something.”

That desire for possessions, however, could not outweigh the needs of the country as a whole, Socarrás said.

Suzaana Rose, a senior English and women’s studies major, came to the discussion as a supporter of the socialist government.

“Cuba is so demonized in the United States, mostly because they are afraid of what they’ve accomplished,” Rose said of the Cuban Revolution. “They were completely cut off from access — sustained themselves entirely in that small island.”

David Colon Cabrera, an anthropology graduate student, was one of the translators for the event. Colon Cabrera was impressed at the students’ honesty in their answers.

“They were really passionate about what they were saying,” he said. “They gave us an informed opinion, and I appreciated that because you don’t always get that from Cuba.”

The students are 18 days into their trip through the United States, where they will engage with students all across the country about their perspective on the health care system, which Socarrás believes the United States could learn from.

“The most important thing you could learn from Cuba is access [to health care] for all and it’s free,” Socarrás said.

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