The Racket of Government Healthcare

Nameless bureaucrats. Faceless bureaucrats.

The racket of bureaucratic anonymity can be frustrating to individuals who must interact with the federal bureaucracy. When you receive unsigned government letters it can be frustrating.

Bureaucrats are told by management that they must sign letters. Since bureaucrats are fearful of their names being reported to the public, they often use the name of their government program, such as “Federal Appeals Board,” rather than the name of a person on the “Board.” Bureaucratic anonymity equals bureaucratic safety.

When you encounter bureaucratic anonymity, accept the challenge and find the name of the bureaucrat. You can fax/email the letter to the Office of the Secretary for the agency sending you the anonymous letter(s). Ask the Secretary to identify the person who sent the letter. If you get no reply, call the Law Library at the Library of Congress. The Library’s excellent law librarians do great work. You CAN locate the anonymous bureaucrat later. As a last resort, D.C. law firms can help.

Locating the bureaucrat can be rewarding depending on the nature of their oversight. If their oversight was unprofessional and the anonymous bureaucrat has a professional license, then you can notify their licensing board.

Start with the licensing board’s Ethics Commission. Document the unprofessional conduct with copies of letters, notes from phone logs, fax confirmations, emails, and best of all, Congressional correspondence, especially if it documents unprofessional conduct. Aside from the licensing board, send copies to the media. You might find a motivated journalist and/or a law firm.

Contacting federal agencies has become easier in recent years. That still does not mean you will get a responsive reply from a bureaucrat. It is the unstated mission of every bureaucrat to discourage you with bureaucratic language.

The combination of nameless, faceless bureaucrats burdening you with bureaucratic language makes most people want to give up. That is always a mistake. If you give up, you lose. If you persist, then you could win your bureaucratic battle!

-30-

James Patterson is a writer and speaker in the Washington, D.C. area. Message here or at [email protected] See my Author Profile at https://go.authorsguild.org/members/4150 or https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/james-patterson-474002a8/ My work is distributed at InsideSources See https://dcjournal.com/author/james-patterson/

James Patterson is a former U.S. diplomat who reported from Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, The United Kingdom, France, Holland, and Washington, D.C. While in Washington, he had an interagency assignment with US Departments of State, Commerce, and Agriculture. In this position, he wrote regularly for the Daily Brief, made classified presentations to Agency Heads, President Bill Clinton, Members of Congress, White House staff, ambassadors, and security officials. He is a former member of the Alabama and Georgia Press Associations. He received government service awards from Secretaries Malcolm Baldrige, Jr. (Commerce), Clayton Yeutter (Agriculture), Edward Madigan (Agriculture), and Dan Glickman (Agriculture).