Success Story from Puerto Rico Legal Services

Legal aid is about helping ordinary people with real-life problems. Client stories illustrate
the day-to-day struggles—and victories—of poor Americans seeking justice under law.

Health Coverage Saved for Elderly Couple

Puerto Rico Legal Services has convinced a judge to issue an injunction preventing the island’s government from denying public health care coverage to an elderly married couple, according to a July 1 article in the English-language Puerto Rico Daily Sun.

The government claimed the couple was ineligible for the state’s health care program because they owned too much land—four cuerdas of land to be exact, the equivalent of slightly less than four acres. Recent reforms to the program require all participants to own no more than one cuerda.

Puerto Rico Legal Services took the case to court, arguing that because the couple’s land was essentially valueless—it is situated on rocky cliffs and can not be sold or rented—an exception should be made.

“The problem,” said Leo Aldridge, communications director for Puerto Rico Legal Services, “is that the government calculates each cuerda as worth $40,000 in disposable income—without doing a formal real estate appraisal nor taking into account the property’s location and condition. According to the government, a two-cuerda beachside property in the capital is worth the same as one in a down-trodden, middle-of-nowhere municipality.”

San Juan Superior Court Judge Carlos Dávila Vélez issued an injunction order in the case, preventing the government from denying care to the couple pending settlement of the suit. He said the couple had a high probability of winning their case as the reforms to the health care program were not done in accordance with the law.

Charles Hey Maestre, executive director of the legal aid program, told the Daily Sun, “We are going to be focusing on these types of loopholes. [Dávila Vélez’s] decision sets a legal precedent for remedying these sorts of problems.”