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Puerto Rico's Protected Classes
 Permalink 0 comments  Puerto Rico , Society |
I have frequently vented on the subject of my dislike for Puerto Rico's "protected classes" system where doctors and lawyers are guaranteed their status. One can become a lawyer only rarely represent anybody. Instead they sit in a chair while placing their official stamp on the dozens of public applications and forms that need to be signed by a lawyer. To do anything - even replace a missing drivers license - one has to pay a lawyer more than half a days salary for a simple signature. It's the protected profession. Just study law or medicine and you get automatic membership into this elite little secret society.
"I wanted to study law not necessarily to be a lawyer," said a former co-worker, "but if you study law then you can do almost anything." Lawyers carry a quasi-god status here in Puerto Rico. The president of my university who does not know the first thing about education and only is who he is due to the fact that he is a prominent lawyer. Hell - almost all of our politicians were lawyers or doctors prior to becoming public servants. Very few make it to the top through community service, unions, or grass roots activism.
If a barber does a horrible job at cutting his clients' hair then he will have to either better himself or pick up a new trade. Unsuccessful lawyers on the other hand, still can get by pretty well. They can spend their life stamping statements if they'd like. It's totally counterproductive to the capitalist concept of hard work and deserved wealth. Doctors aren't necessarily wealthy because they do good jobs at healing people, but because they have converted their offices into factories where they hand out little prescriptions, sign sick notes, and attempt to fill patient quotas. If they need to do anything more then they'll send you to a surgeon or down the street to a lab (places where the employees are hard working folks just like ourselves.)
The most disturbing aspect of it all is how I am forced to pay a lawyer a substantial amount of money only so that he may explain to me what my own law states. Not only would it be excessively troublesome to get a hold of all the published laws that pertain to my concerns, but also once I do so it would be even more difficult to understand what they're saying. We vote for and pay legislators and governors (almost all of which were former lawyers) so that they may pass laws that we ourselves cannot read or understand without contracting a lawyer. "But they have public lawyers for people who can't afford them." Bullshit.
I once called the "Public" legal office in search of some legal assistance. All I wanted was an orientation. After being given half a dozen phone numbers and run-arounds I finally came across a "TeleLawyer" service. The concept was great and the person on the other line was quite helpful, but then I came to the point where I needed legal representation. At the time I was earning a little over $15,000 a year (a little less than $13,000 after taxes,) was paying more than $300 a month a month ($4,000 a year) in child support, and was also paying for my own college education since I did not qualify for any financial aid from my university. Now I am aware that my child support should not be a burden for the state - I take full responsibility for my actions - but the point is that I simply did not have the earnings necessary to contract a private lawyer. After spilling the beans do you know what I was told? "Sorry - you do not qualify. You earn too much."
I was forced to pay private lawyers for orientation as I *attempted* to file legal proceedings against my baby's mother by myself. After doing so, a month passed without the court (or my baby's mother, for that matter) responding. "Just get a lawyer," a Justice Department told me as I vented about the difficulties of representing yourself in court. As if it was that easy. The wheels didn't churn until large sums of money magically fell from the sky to that I may pay for a private lawyer. After taking control of the situation things began to occur as my lawyer did the things that lawyers do. (I had no idea that I could hand-deliver a copy of my plea to the judge herself. Too bad it took me a lawyer to find this out.) "That's the way it is," that same co-worker told me. "It's their game and we aren't suppose to play it."
When reading Marxist works I do not pay much mind to talk of societies divided into capitalists and how they oppress proletarians. Most Puerto Rican businessmen (many of whom run small and medium-sized businesses) are kindhearted people who wish the best for their employees. Most of the business owners that neighbor the Internet Cafe that I manage are just as progressive as the employees that they hire. Them being employers does not make them any more greedier or conservative than ourselves. The problem is not those who wish to amass capital, but those who have protected professions - a protection that stuns productivity and social development.
Judicial or medical reform does very little to change any of this. In fact, when candidate for Governor Pedro Rossello had recently made some proposals that would be less beneficial to the medical class than the proposals of his opponent, he was booed. Even though I am not too fond of Rossello's health care plan, I do respect him strongly for him standing up the medical class.
If I woke up king of Puerto Rico, one of the first things I would do is to take down this rigid profession system. Toss our encyclopedia-thick volumes of laws into the trash as our legislators pass versions simple enough for the common man to understand and utilize by himself. And what do we do with all of the lawyers? Who cares? Maybe we can make them history teachers or something.
And what ever happened to house doctors? What ever happened to doctors that would come to your house to check up on you? All that has disappeared simply because its not as profitable as turning your clinic into a factory. Sure we have all the new medicines and technology, but the humanity of the classic doctor-patient relationship has disappeared. The state needs to put the social aspect back into the medical profession even if it has to be done against the will of the doctors themselves. "What if they all leave the island so that they may make more money elsewhere?" Fuck them. We'll send recruiters into our caserios and our campos with full scholarships for any and every young person who wishes to become a public health servant.
We really need to lift ourselves up and take control of the situation. Sadly, I have no idea how the fuck we can do so. I'm already "boycotting" it as much as I can. I almost never cross the path of a doctor nor do I resort to lawyers everything I have a problem, so aside from that I don't know what to do.
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