Puerto Rico Doctors Strike Over Low Fees
Thousands of Puerto Rican doctors shut their clinic doors Tuesday in an island-wide strike to pressure the government to raise fees in its managed health care system.
Adalberto Mendoza, president of the Puerto Rican School of Medical Surgeons, said up to 95% of the island’s 8,000 doctors were participating in the strike.
Beginning late Tuesday, only public emergency rooms remained open, Mendoza said. He added, without elaborating, that “special arrangements” had been made to accommodate heightened demand there.
The doctors are protesting Gov. Pedro Rossello’s medical reform program, which began in 1994. Under the program, more than 1 million Puerto Ricans have already received identification cards that let them receive medical attention in any clinic. The card is known disparagingly as the “tarjetita,” or “little card.”
Doctors receive $34 per month for each card-holding patient--a sum doctors claim is too low to cover pricey operations and laboratory tests.
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