In what would be amusing if it were not so sickening, the paid attorney and lobbyist for the Florida Chiropractic Association Kim Driggers JD just so happens to also be an At Large Director on the Board of the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE) according to its website.

Driggers recently testified before the Florida House Subcommittee on Health Regulation that Florida needs the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) to continue to have a monopoly on accreditation in order to get licensed in the state because this somehow protects the public.

What many don't realize is that the NBCE enjoys a similar monopoly.

So here we have an attorney representing the FCA somehow justifying the existence and continuation of a monopoly, restricting freedom and restraining trade in the state.

Making matters worse is how badly misinformed Driggers is regarding chiropractic education and practice. How did she even get a seat on the NBCE given her widespread ignorance of the profession?

The membership of the FCA should be embarrassed by the actions of its leadership.

Just like the CCE, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners enjoys a monopoly on testing of chiropractic school graduates in pretty much every state in the country. This testing is needed in order to get a license to practice chiropractic because states have added the requirement to the statutes. The effort to add language like this to give CCE and NBCE a monopoly began in 1974 when CCE was recognized by the US Department of Education. Following that event the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB) worked to get every state to add this language. 

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Florida has gone so far as to also require graduates who wish to practice there to take a jurisprudence test administered by the NBCE after taking all other parts of the NBCE exams in order to get licensed. This happened even though the state of Florida told the Florida Board of Chiropractic to do away with the jurisprudence exam.

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Making matters even worse is who else the NBCE leaders throw student loan money at - including the self appointed Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB) - another unnecessary non profit group of chiropractors who exert the will of the Cartel upon the profession.

Student money from the NBCE has been funding the bulk of the FCLB's budget for a very long time - to the tune of $655,140.00 a year. And that does not count the free rent and utilities the NBCE gives the FCLB totaling $32,764.00 per year.

If you are wondering why the NBCE funds the FCLB and why they pay their rent and utilities - those are great questions.

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Another benefactor of student money from the NBCE is the "not for profit" Foundation for Chiropractic Progress (F4CP) which was given $615,000.00 of student money by the NBCE Directors for "career development". Considering the F4CP took in $1.2 million in 2018 one wonders why the NBCE had to give them any student money.

And what a surprise that NBCE Directors sit on the Board of the F4CP.

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Actually it is no surprise at all since a close inspection of these "non profits" reveals that their Directors bounce back and forth between the NBCE, FCLB and other Cartel controlled organizations on a regular basis. It is a close knit group of good ole' boys - and girls.

Given the fact that the NBCE is not even necessary, it seems pretty obvious that the NBCE should not be raising fees on students. Instead what should be happening is state regulatory boards should do what Colorado did and remove the NBCE requirement from the statute.

The fact that the NBCE is actually named in the statutes, rules and regulations in every state could be considered restraint of trade by active market players. And the Supreme Court has ruled that active market players acting in this fashion do not have the protection of the state if they are acting without proper oversight in these decisions.

Taken together, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners and the Council on Chiropractic Education have complete control over the education, licensing, and regulatory aspects of the entire chiropractic profession.

As Lawrence J. DeNardis Ph.D of the United States Department of Education's NACIQI Committee stated - they have a monopoly and have established a Cartel within the chiropractic profession.

"Madam Chair, we've heard charges and countercharges from I trust a wide, fairly wide spectrum of the chiropractic profession. At least that's the way it seems to me. Battles over turf, battles over philosophy, maybe battles over personal ambition, but divisions of every kind. And some of this, maybe most of it, is a consequence of, at least as I see it, a monopoly control of a profession which has led to the establishment of a virtual cartel, not unusual. There are several other professions that we deal with that have a virtual cartel control of the profession. We can't change that, but we can consider measures that will try to send a message to the prevailing control group that they should try to be more inclusive rather than less inclusive and I suggest that we try to figure out what is within our range of alternatives to do that. Because I believe if we simply hear it, discuss it, anguish over it, and then give them five years of recognition, that we haven't been the impetus for any corrective action for the profession and I worry about the profession." 

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