FCLB Meets in Palm Beach Amid Growing Calls for Break up of Chiropractic Cartel

The Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB) meets this week amidst a growing group of individuals, trade organizations, chiropractic businesses and schools within the chiropractic profession calling for the dismantling of the monopoly enjoyed Chiropractic Cartel.

The FCLB, a self proclaimed "association of government agencies empowered to regulate the chiropractic profession" is meeting this week in Palm Beach Florida.

The FCLB has no actual governmental or regulatory authority, is accountable to no one except itself and according to publicly available tax records receives the bulk of its funding from student loan money funneled to them from the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE). It is common for FCLB members to bounce back and forth between the FCLB, NBCE and state regulatory boards. Some serve on all three at the same time.

In fact ,the FCLB and NBCE has repeatedly been under fire for these practices with the most recent involving a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit reveals the shadowy relationship between chiropractors who sit on state boards and how those relationships are tied to participation in the FCLB and NBCE including soldiers moving up the ladder within the control hierarchy of the Cartel.

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Over the past year, at least 50 trade organizations, chiropractic businesses and schools within the chiropractic profession have signed on to a series of Resolutions calling for the end of the Chiropractic Cartel operating within the profession.

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This Cartel was identified many years ago with numerous articles published in the chiropractic press outlining the scope of the enterprise and revealing a trail of student loan money used to subsidize its control over the entire educational, licensing and regulatory aspects of the profession.

The most dramatic description of the Chiropractic Cartel was revealed during a hearing for the Petition for Renewal of Recognition of The Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) before the United States Department of Education.

Dr. Lawrence J. DeNardis a Committee Member of the United States Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education's National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity made a bombshell statement in response to CCE's request for renewal of its recognition by the Department referring to the Cartel and its monopoly 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."

Both the CCE and the NBCE (both private businesses) enjoy a virtual statutory monopoly due to language in nearly every single state granting them this monopoly since it is impossible to get a license to practice chiropractic unless one is a graduate of a CCE accredited school and passes the NBCE mandate exams.

The monopoly and reach of the Chiropractic Cartel extends beyond the United States to other countries around the world where chiropractic is regulated. The CCE, NBCE and FCLB all have international arms.

The FCLB is the regulatory arm and provides "consolidated services" for ensuring what they decide to be "the safe, ethical practice of chiropractic." Among other ways the FCLB accomplishes this agenda through a "unified adoption of resolutions" in an effort to "protect the profession's examining regulatory standards and ultimately the consumer public".

Through its efforts the FCLB acts as the police of the profession helping its soldiers on state regulatory boards and the capos within other member organizations to enforce the standards agreed upon by the Cartel.

In addition to the control of chiropractic education in the schools by the CCE and NBCE, the FCLB helps extend that control in the post graduate and continuing education realm of the profession through PACE.

According to FCLB distributed propaganda "PACE recognized continuing education courses promote quality chiropractic continuing education programs, provide reliable and scientifically sound educational updates".

According to the most recently available public records in 2020 the FCLB had total Revenue of $1,139,407.

Of that - $81,192.00 came from State Board Membership Dues. In other words State Tax Dollars paid for members of chiropractic regulatory boards to attend FCLB meetings like this one in Palm Beach Florida.

They also received a Government Grant in the amount of $75,122.00 (Presumably Federal Tax Dollars)

The FCLB earned income of $187,523.00 from controlling the content of Continuing Education in the chiropractic profession through PACE.

The bulk of their funding however comes from student loan debt through receipt of $739,577.00 from the NBCE.

This scheme has been going on for decades now and it tracks the steady marginalization of the conservative, traditional faction of the profession that seeks to focus on the management of vertebral subluxation as opposed to an expanded scope encroaching on the practice of medicine.

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All of this is being done on the backs of chiropractic students and their loan debt which is already out of control and inconsistent with the value of a chiropractic education.

The signatories to the Resolutions call for freedom in chiropractic education, testing, licensing and practice. The signers are not demanding that the participating members go out of business but instead call for an end to the monopoly enjoyed by these businesses through statutory language.

An example of such efforts recently occurred in the State of Florida where the Florida Chiropractic Society (FCS) and its President Brian Moriarity DC led an effort involving dozens of practicing chiropractors, leaders and organizations to get Bills passed in the Florida House and Senate removing what is referred to as "CCE Only" language in the Florida statutes.

Both Bills eventually failed due to efforts by the Florida Chiropractic Association (FCA) to stop the bills through a disinformation campaign waged on legislators. The FCA claimed that public health would be in danger if the CCE did not have a monopoly. The FCA went so far to admit that monopolies are bad but that we need this one. So contentious was this battle in Florida that lobbyists for the FCA were thrown out of legislators' office's due to their aggressive behavior aimed at stopping the monopoly.

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Chiropractors are urged to contact their state trade associations and demand that they become signatories to the Resolutions.

Chiropractors who "serve" within the organizations that make up the Cartel are urged to resign and give up the façade that they are serving on these boards to "change them from within" or to "have a seat at the table" as opposed to what they are really participating in.

Anne Neal JD an attorney and a Committee Member of the United States Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education's National Advisory Committee on Instituional Quality and Integrity made this statement in response to CCE's request for renewal of its recognition by the Department referring to the Cartel and its monopoly within the chiropractic profession:

"Now it may get to the broader issue which was raised earlier that in a monopoly situation, the climate of fear that we've been hearing about, that probably happens because frankly when you're accepting these standards in a monopoly situation, that's about as voluntary as accepting an offer from Tony Soprano, so I think that's the issue we really are dealing with here. But I'm very concerned that we've got to play fair with everyone, and I'm not sure we're playing fair or the Department is playing fair."

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