Healthcare Crisis Demands More Efficient Managed Care

Editorial

Caribbean Business

Puerto Rico's economy is having serious problems and none of the government
agencies is safe, not even the Health Insurance Administration (ASES by its
Spanish acronym). Such is the severity of the fiscal crisis that the government
agency in charge of managing the Government Health Plan (GHP) faces the real
possibility that it will have to curtail services or release as many as 850,000 of
the 1.4 million medically indigent beneficiaries who are currently covered by
healthcare reform.

It is astonishing that this most recent version of healthcare reform would face
the possibility of insolvency when the government had assigned to it about $6.4
billion stretched across six years when the Patient Protection & Affordable Care
Act (ACA, or Obamacare) was signed into law in 2011. How did we get into this
insolvent mess?

Several factors have contributed to the potential deficit. In simple accounting
terms, prerequisites of Obamacare, which mandates state coverage for all those
who are medically indigent with catastrophic illnesses, reportedly have driven the
costs of compliance as high as...[CONTINUE READING]

New VAT System Too Complex

Editorial

Caribbean Business

Puerto Rico Treasury Secretary Juan Zaragoza has his hands full these days
as he is trying mightily to explain the reasoning behind Gov. Alejandro
García Padilla's new tax reform, which calls for a transformation to a value-
added tax (VAT, or IVA by its Spanish acronym) system. Zaragoza's job
couldn't be more difficult as the measure is drawing the broadest opposition
that this newspaper has witnessed in a long time.

Important mayors belonging to the incumbent governor's Popular Democra-
tic Party (PDP), such as those of San Juan, Caguas and Mayagüez, as well as
former PDP Govs. Rafael Hernández Colón and Aníbal Acevedo Vilá have
come out against the VAT proposal; their voices of dissent are joined by
leaders from the opposition...[CONTINUE READING]

Let Puerto Rico Go Bankrupt

Opinion

BloombergView

In an ideal world, Puerto Rico would be bankrupt. Instead, it is sliding
toward something far more dangerous and uncertain -- and President
Barack Obama and Congress need to intervene.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee is taking up a long-shot
bill to allow the island's public-sector corporations to declare bankruptcy.
Providing these protections isn’t any kind of a bailout. It will just help
Puerto Rico’s government begin to ease a debt-servicing burden that
consumes 16 percent of its budget. It will also ensure that not just the
biggest or loudest creditors get paid.

This crisis has been a long time brewing. Since 2006, Puerto Rico's
economy has contracted every year but one. Its unemployment rate of
13.7 percent is double that of the U.S. mainland; its poverty rate is twice
that of Mississippi. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's population and tax base
have aged and shrunk...[CONTINUE READING]

Opinion: A Declaration of Independence for Puerto Rico

Note: The Puerto Rico Monitor's linking to this column does not necessarily equal an 
endorsement of its views on our part.

A Declaration of Independence for Puerto Rico

The Panam Post

by Frank Worley-Lopez

On September 23, 1868, a group of nearly 1,000 men rose up against

Spain and declared Puerto Rico’s independence from the colonial power. 

Their rebellion, known as El Grito de Lares and led by men such as 

Ramón Emeterio Betances (author of the Ten Commandments of Free  

Men), was crushed by the Spaniards, but in many ways, it was the birth  

of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

While a complete history lesson is not in order today, Betances was

clearly an individualist and believer in liberty. Since then, mostly 

since the 1950s, the independence movement has been dominated

by Marxist leftists and socialism. In the subsequent years, the people

of Puerto Rico have rejected communism and the Puerto Rico Inde-

pendence Party (PIP)...[MORE]