When the Health Care bill is finally passed, and by all accounts it will be soon, it is likely that Obama and Congress will begin a search for a new dragon to slay. Perhaps after bailing out the economy, providing cars, jobs, and quality, affordable, health care to all Americans, (I am still waiting on my government funded girlfriend), they will see fit to embark upon a campaign for legal care reform.
Like health care, the vast majority of Americans have access to at least a minimum of legal service. When someone is ill and cannot afford to see a doctor, or visit their local health care clinic, they can go to the emergency room. There they are assured they will get at least a semblance of medical care. When someone is arrested or accused, they have access to legal care. If they cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for them. A public defender will provide at least a semblance of legal care. Like health care, at least until the Health Care Reform bill becomes law, and most likely even after, the quality of legal care one can obtain is predicated on how much one is able to pay for it.
Just as there are horror stories regarding the slipshod health care sometimes provided to the poor and uninsured, there are horror stories to be told concerning the slipshod legal care received by the poor and those unable to pay. People sometimes die due to the poor health care they receive. People, in Texas at least, sometimes die due to the poor legal care they receive. The wealthy provide themselves legal insurance by keeping attorneys on retainer. Though the vast majority of Americans cannot afford that luxury, they should at least have the right to consult an attorney and have adequate, affordable legal care when they need to, rather than just when they are arrested.
For a long time the quality and availability of health care to the poor and uninsured was deemed adequate. Recently, that care was deemed to be not only inadequate, but unfair. It was decided that it would best for everyone involved if all people had access to the same quality care as that available to the insured when injured and ill. The theory is that providing basic health insurance to those heretofore unable to obtain it would be the responsible and ethical thing to do. More importantly, we would be a better, healthier society due to the care that health insurance would be able to provide. We would also be a wealthier society, if only in a manner of speaking, from all the money that would be saved through the practice of preventive medicine by creating and maintaining a healthier public.
The same logic can be applied to the legal industry. In criminal cases, an attorney will be provided if one is unable to afford one. Little is said about the quality of the legal care a court appointed attorney might provide. Only competency is required, not quality or enthusiasm. In that sense, there is little difference between a court appointed attorney and an emergency room. If anything, the quality of care provided in an emergency room often exceeds the quality of service provided by a court appointed attorney. A doctor will often work harder to keep an uninsured patient alive than a public defender will work to keep an innocent client out of prison. This is a disparity that should not be overlooked. Like health, liberty is one the most important things a person can have and one of the most terrible things to lose.
In civil cases, those unable to pay for legal representation can at times rely upon legal aid or pro bono work by civil lawyers. But in neither does one choose the lawyer he wants to represent him. One takes whomever he is fortunate to get, if one is lucky enough to get anyone at all. The truly lucky ones get a lawyer motivated by the case and interested in achieving justice for his client. The less fortunate may get someone who is merely satisfying his or her state bar requirement.
While even the best of lives can be diminished due to poor health, they can also be diminished by the lack of liberty and poverty. In the mind of a citizen, the choice between illness or injury and bankruptcy or incarceration would be an unpleasant one to make. Just as people have suffered, and even died due to the poor and unenthusiastic care hospitals sometimes provide to those unable to pay, many innocent people have been imprisoned and impoverished due their inability to afford good legal care. Many others have received sentences that could have been significantly reduced if they had received quality legal care. A few in Texas might be alive today if they had had better legal representation.
In regards to civil cases, the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is even more pronounced. While, depending on one's perspective, the stakes in civil court are less than those in criminal court, that does not mean they are not important or even vital to those involved. Many risk houses, children, livelihoods, and more in civil cases. Losers in civil court may not go to jail, at least not immediately, but they risk being impoverished, deprived, and severely burdened. The quality of legal care available to the average individual in civil court by pro bono attorneys and such groups as Legal Aid is dwarfed be the legal care available to the wealthy. Wealthy plaintiffs, if they cannot outright crush their opponents, can chisel them into submission. Moreover, the better the legal representation, the better the odds of victory. The prospects of the poor in a civil suit are slim indeed unless there is the possibility of a settlement large enough to attract a quality attorney. It is true that the wealthy sometimes lose in court. It is also true the wealthy sometimes die in the hospital. But whether one is going to the hospital or going to court, it is indisputably better to be rich.
Another benefit of providing free legal care is that it would greatly mitigate the acrimony, frustration, and bitterness that frequently leads to violence by those who feel they are being strong armed, cheated, and ignored. The possibility of mediating and litigating disputes that free legal care would provide would go a long way towards reducing the baleful temptation to take matters into one's own hands; an act that often leads to crime. Crime in turn costs money. If nothing else, free legal care might reduce traffic in emergency rooms as well as lighten Judge Judy's case load.
Just as the benefits of liberty can be undermined in the presence of ill health, the benefits good health can be undermined in the absence of liberty. Why would a just and compassionate society allow this disparity to exist? Why would a society so sensitive to the travails of the medically uninsured be so indifferent to the suffering and misery that inadequate legal care causes today in the U.S.? Perhaps it is simply too soon to ask the government to address every disparity and injustice in the U.S. It might also have something to do with the fact that there are many more lawyers in the country than there are physicians.
I suspect that if we had fewer lawyers on Capitol Hill and more doctors and health care professionals, we would be having a very different discussion about how to keep health care costs down and extend medical care to those unable to afford it. Who knows, we might even see the issue of tort reform revisited. Malpractice law and the need to carry malpractice insurance are huge burdens on the health care industry; one that is passed along to health care consumers. Because we have so many lawyers in Washington, the chances to reduce health care costs by removing or lightening the myriad of financial and legal burdens the health care industry has to bear is unlikely at best. We can always hope that because we have so many lawyers in Washington, we have a decent chance of getting tort reform or a national legal care bill introduced. But because we have so many lawyers in Washington, it is quite unlikely we will never see any such bill passed or even proposed. If nothing else, it would be fascinating to see the response of the legal profession to a government attempt to coopt it.
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