Finance-me-cratic Constants in the Bureaucratic Universe

America has come to a standstill in many important areas - health, education, leadership, and more. Recessions have always found ways to blame any number of individuals or types of people. In fact, recessions have a common cause involving the relationship between finance-me-crats, aristocrats, and bureaucrats.

(Note Finance-o-crats was changed to Finance-Me-Crats - a better term with those that have self-interest above nation and political party.)
"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." November 8, 2002 by Ben Bernanke (the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve), as he agreed with Friedman in blaming the Federal Reserve for its role in the Great Depression. Bernanke should remember that
"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." -- Milton Friedman
The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.  Leonard McCoy, M.D. (Bones of Star Trek) - There are a number of timeless quotes from docs fighting with bureaucrats to keep health care alive where people need health care. The first female Native American physician came to be because she witnessed bureacratic health care and vowed to bring health care to people in most need of better health.
Smaller portions of Americans left behind have grown to become most Americans left behind and sadly few realize that the very designs of health care leave them behind. In American financial, education, and health wealth follows designs. Health care follows the finance-me-crat pattern of more for fewer with high profit and little responsibility.
Take equal parts aristocrat, bureaucrat, and finance-me-crat - mix for 100 years and you have the American health care design  - one size fits none. - RCB

To recover as a nation and to prevent further economic distress across the globe, America must bail out from the financial crises aided and abetted by finance-me-crats (investment cost and risk greater than reward with those responsible escaping responsibility)

and the real estate bubble burst aided and abetted by finance-me-crats (investment cost and risk greater than reward with laws protecting finance-o-crats in case of bubble burst)

and the student debt loan bubble about to burst aided and abetted by finance-me-crats (investment cost and risk greater than reward with laws protecting finance-me-crats in case of bubble burst).

Scandals rock college sports aided and abetted by finance-me-crats while responsible university leaders looked the other way (and those responsible seem to mock the destruction heaped on so many lives and reputations).

Health care spending ends up less and less in the hands of those who deliver health care with more and more spending ending up in the hands of finance-me-crats and those making profits shaped by finance-me-crats. We spend ever more for ever less result for all Americans except finance-me-crats and finance-me-crat wannabes.

Health insurance reforms needed for decades to reign in health insurance laws appear to be on the way out along with other reforms. The health insurance design was set up by finance-me-crats in each state to guarantee maximum profit with little risk or responsibility while individuals and their families suffer the consequences and sometimes can get justice at even consequence to a decent life.
Also finance-me-crats benefited from increased profits by blaming the new reforms that had not taken effect - a nice strategy to deceive the American people about the new reforms. In other words, reforms have failed and will fail to address the basic finance-me-crat modus operandi - maximal profit regardless of consequences with little investment or risk by redesigning American business and government.

Finance-me-crats have also found ways to spin media perceptions so that areas such as health care appear to be under government control when the real control is in the hands of finance-me-crats and those that they can hire, collaborate with, or influence.

Congress is constantly distracted and distorted in composition and in behavior by finance-o-crats who shape special laws governing insurance, real estate, college loans, health insurance, and taxation including decades of special tax protections for the ultrawealthy at federal and state levels.

Special interest groups led by finance-o-crats and protected by Supreme Court decisions funnel billions of dollars into divisive interests. Millions can flow from outside of states to shape elections inside of states allowing maximal control for minimal cost and little responsibility. A few billion injected in the right direction can divide the nation and divide states and divide political parties. Such behind the scene designs succeed in preventing identification of finance-o-crats as a major problem - along with frustrating the American people about becoming involved in governing.

And when the nation was at its knees desperate for some cash to help recover much of the nation from the abuses of finance-me-crats, the finance-me-crats, always first at the feeding trough, were quickest to react and were the first to waste the recovery dollars for themselves and for their allies. This spending resulted in limited recovery for maximal cost and the spending also illustrated finance-me-crat disdain for the great responsibility of using government funding wisely or for recovery.

Perhaps America should focus more on the role of finance-me-crats who have done what the founders of American government tried to avoid for 200 years - voting the US treasury into the pockets of those with too much government influence.
This one is certainly less like the usual basic health access posting, but if we continue to send more and more concentrations of spending to those already with concentrations, we will not have basic health access or much of anything involving basic services. Daily Yonder Article on Primary Care Cuts Planned Jan 1, 2012
Thanks to all 12,000 who have visited Basic Health Access in 2011.

Robert C. Bowman, M.D.        Basic Health Access Web    Basic Health Access Blog
SMART Basic Health Access     World of Rural Medical Education
Basic Health Access Blogspot 2011 - Summaries and Links for 2011

Dr. Bowman is the North American Co-Editor of Rural and Remote Health and a Professor in Family Medicine at A T Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine. He was the founding chair of the Rural Medical Educators Group of the National Rural Health Association, he was the long term chair of the STFM Group on Rural Health, he is the founding director of Priority Infrastructure at http://www.infrastructureamerica.org/ and he is the author of the World of Rural Medical Education, and Physician Workforce Studies
Meeting Primary Care Needs in the Last Half of the 21st Century - Really!. 
Clinician Specific Medical Education
SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely
To Follow the Money, Follow the Workforce   Health spending patterns shape health workforce and vice versa.
Why Do Government Reports Project Increasing Primary Care When Fewer Enter and Remain in Primary Care?
Health Workforce Designs for Health Access Have Tried Everything Except What Has Worked for Health Access.
A Major Reason for Runaway Health Care Costs: Three Dimensions of Non-Primary Care Expansion while Primary Care is Shutout 3 to 0.

Comments

  1. Jeoffry B.August 21, 2011 at 8:45 AM

    As a solo family doc of the old school with almost 35 years in practice - and still loving it most every day, I follow your insightful and passionate blogs with admiration. I worked hard to promote Medicare for All during 2009 and came to certain realizations about the broader social and economic context of our society which mirror this post. I do not have them written down, but you can see my analysis and conclusions in a talk I gave to fellow health reform activists. It can be accessed from the front page of www.pnhpcalifornia.org.

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