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It seems our legislators may be pushing South Carolina further to the left by following recommendations of the Boston Consulting Group, a firm that donates heavily to Democrat causes, just like they were with the Scout Motors deal last year. SC Department of Administration paid this consulting group $3.215M in 2023, which was recommended on p. 8 of the 2023-2024 Executive Budget Summary and laid out in Act 60 (DHEC Restructuring) which was ratified in May of last year.

This article is a continuation of a series. Check out our the first three articles here.

We’ve seen a lot bandied about the internet this past week about BCG’s close ties with the globalist World Economic Forum, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality. They were an active participant in the UN General Assembly week, UN Global Compact Forum, and Aspen Institute ESG Summit. Below is a screen shot of some of their strategic partners. A more thorough list can be found here.

Likewise, BCG is listed as a Partner on the WEF website, and at least one BCG employee currently holds a key position within the World Economic Forum, while others remain active as well:

  • BCG Global Chair Rich Lesser serves as Chief Advisor to the WEF Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders
  • BCG Managing Director Neeraj Aggarwal has been an active participant in WEF Davos over the years
  • BCG Managing Director & Senior Partners Vaishali Rastogi and Tawfik Hammoud have written articles for WEF
  • BCG Managing Director & Senior Directors Sylvain Duranton and Sharon Marcil have written content for WEF Annual Meetings
  • BCG Managing Director & Senior Partner Saurabh Tripathi is a participant in the World Economic Forum on India
  • BCG Managing Director & Senior Partner Jonathan Scott and Partner Colleen Desmond were the in-person presenters to the SC legislature. Read more here. Mr. Scott has written about health care here. Ms. Desmond is a member of the health care payers, providers, and services sector of BCG and has written about the Covid-19 pandemic here where the discussion focuses on a fundamental restructuring of the health care landscape and how the delivery of health care will center around the strongest players (read, smaller, independent doctors will continue to struggle even more post-COVID).

Worth investigating more is a thread found on Reddit that states, “Infiltrators from BCG not only took down companies through sucking out their money and making terrible decisions from within, but also having said companies overleveraging themselves on loans they couldn’t afford to pay back.”

During debate at the State House yesterday, the philosophy of BCG was raised in a discussion where BCG has recommended the State sell some property that houses these health agencies. Watch below or here. Instead of recommending the State purchase new property, the recommendation is to enter into a lease, which would place those agencies in buildings that align with the WEF’s Sustainable Development Goals, but don’t seem to be a fiscally responsible move by the legislature. One recalls the WEF commercial, “You will own nothing, and be happy.” You can read two recent reports by BCG for the WEF that clearly show the goals BCG has here and here. It doesn’t take long before reading these in comparison with the Addendum below to see the goals are one and the same. Not what South Carolinians want, and not good for taxpayers’ pocketbooks.

Addendum to Interim Report

On January 9, 2024 Boston Consulting Group submitted an Addendum to the Interim Report which recommended sweeping changes to the public health and human services agencies in South Carolina. If you have time, please read this 16-page report. One recommendation was to consolidate some agencies with overlap (Department of Mental Health and Department of Alcohol and Other Dependent Services). This merger makes sense as there is overlap in these agencies.

Another recommendation was to streamline state agency structure and roles and refers to an Interim Report from October 2023 which we have not read. BCG recommends the agencies be placed under a “central organization…providing one common leader with the power to bring agencies together to deliver…” (BCG Addendum to Interim Report, p. 3). Even in the face of this language being clearly articulated in the Addendum to the Interim Report, our South Carolina leadership continues to assert that no new powers are being created with this position.

It becomes clear upon reading this report that the recommendations are made with the intent of streamlining these organizations to facilitate data sharing and optimization of data collection and usage on constituents to provide more services to South Carolinians. Sounds great, until you realize that this will ultimately expand services, increase reliance on government, and cost South Carolinians untold tax dollars. On p. 16 of the report, BCG notes that “As of 2020, South Carolina spends approximately 70% less in state dollars on substance use treatment compared with other South Atlantic states and other U.S. states…The state should consider ways to increase total funding for substance use disorder services.”

On page 6 of the report, there is a map of the US depicting every single other state in the country as having a system that is more amenable to health services than South Carolina’s. Interestingly enough, states such as California, Texas, and Virginia, which are touted as having one umbrella agency over all health and human services agencies seem to have as many, if not more agencies and commissions in this category.

Who Makes the Appointments?

Not only that, but the Governor and other Legislators are the ones to make the appointments to all of these different agencies in most of the other states we checked, including Florida. Not one appointed bureaucrat, as is proposed for South Carolina. Currently, the SC Governor appoints the agency heads and/or commissioners, while the proposed bills give the Governor just one appointment and the subsequent agency heads, advisory boards, and commissions are ALL chosen by the new Secretary of Public Health, aka the Health Czar.

Interestingly enough, if one reads both H4927 and S915 it is evident very quickly that these bills, while similar, contain some major differences, many of which we pointed out in our previous article. A rather large difference between the House and Senate bill is that while the Senate bill allows for these positions to be appointed by the new Secretary of Public Health “with the advice and consent of the Senate”, this phrase is conspicuously missing EVERYWHERE throughout H4927, with the exception of the initial appointment of the Secretary of Public Health himself.

Brief Aside

Let’s take a moment to address something we’ve heard from pretty much every legislator we’ve spoken to that is in favor of this method of restructuring. It goes something like this: “Currently under the DHEC model we have a board that cannot be removed by the governor. With the Health Secretary, the Senate or House can remove him, or his office can even be written out of the budget or a proviso can limit his actions. That is impossible under the current DHEC model.”

While this is somewhat accurate, there is a huge elephant in the room. Act 60 of 2023 split DHEC up into the Department of Public Health and the Department of Environmental Services. Signed last year, this Act will not go into effect until July 1, 2024. It gives the Governor the ability to appoint a new Director of Public Health. The proposed bills add an additional layer of bureaucracy between all of the agency heads and the Governor. This ability to remove any director could simply be added in by amending the law to add “…subject to removal by the governor pursuant to the provisions of Section 1-3-240” for any Gubernatorial appointment.

Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT)

This is a buzz-word in the substance abuse industry which basically means that addictions are treated with other medications. Many times in South Carolina, alcoholics are unable to even receive inpatient treatment if their case is not able to be treated with a medical detox. Oftentimes, these medications don’t work, work less than optimally, or only work when the person has a desire to remain faithful to a medication regimen (not often), etc.

A few years ago, Attorney General Wilson entered into a class-action settlement with Purdue Pharma, et. al. that bypassed the legislature in creating a quasi-governmental organization that is aimed at administering the settlement funds, known as SCORF. This board has a job of rubber-stamping requests as they come through. As long as the requests fall in line with the requirements listed in the settlement agreement, the board is to release the funds in the order received. County and city governments are allocated a certain percentage of the funds for their use, along with a small percentage reserved for non-profits. Additionally, after a set time if local governments fail to utilize the settlement funds, those go into a general fund which then become available to non-profits as well. Other states have seen programs such as clean needles in gas station restrooms as a result of these initiatives. The biggest takeaway from the settlement terms is that the most emphasis seems to be placed on MAT, while other options such as counseling and rehabilitation take a back seat.

Remember, BCG recommends to increase funding for substance use disorders, quoted above.

Tied in with these recommendations to restructure the public health agencies are echoes that the state ought to tap into these Opioid settlement funds. With an appointed bureaucrat at the helm who has no qualification requirements and who could possibly have been a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical or insurance company in the very recent past, one wonders where this restructuring is heading. It seems to be putting nails in the coffin of medical freedom in South Carolina as the centralization of power tends to eliminate non-prevailing methodologies. It most certainly aims to grow the business of socialized medicine in our state, as that is a goal of the globalist companies who are driving these decisions in our government.

Why are conservative lawmakers instituting a policy that will surely increase constituents’ reliance on the government?

Solving the Homeless Problem?

Another interesting item found on pages 6-7 in the 2024-2025 Governor’s Executive Budget Summary is a recommendation for the Department of Mental Health to receive $10M for “a public-private partnership with the City of Columbia and Richland County to pilot a comprehensive resource center with wraparound services to reduce homelessness in the Columbia area…this project is based upon a model used in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area…If this model proves successful, it could be replicated in other communities in our state.” Read here how Houston moved 25,000 people from the streets into government housing, with no prerequisites such as being off drugs or having a job. We do understand there is a growing homelessness problem in the state that is not going away any time soon, but that’s a topic for another day.

This novel project comes on the tail of the Department of Mental Health receiving a scathing report from the US Department of Justice last summer, indicating the department was violating ADA. The report is chilling as to the images of drugged-up patients stuck in Community Residential Care Facilities for years longer than the customary temporary stay, not receiving any meaningful training to (re)enter society. This reeks of the pharmaceutical model that favors medication for treatment (MAT) instead of behavioral therapy. Just take a look at the number of over-paid psychiatrists the Department of Mental Health has on its books (some making as much as $100k in excess of the state average pay for a psychiatrist!). A program such as the one proposed in Columbia will likely serve to bloat the agency even further and increase these peoples’ reliance on the government for a steady stream of prescription drugs, and increase reliance on socialized medicine.

Add-on Services

Often consulting groups like BCG, when they present their final report, will come out with recommendations not only for ways to spend more money, but also suggested places to spend said money. Take, for example, a company like Medical Alley, which just happens to list BCG as a partner organization. Medical Alley contains a network of organizations that are waiting to be hired to help South Carolina spend more money on health care. Once the final report comes out on April 1, we will see what innovative health care models our legislators will be salivating to spend taxpayer dollars on.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this: This restructuring bill is just the beginning of the rampant growth of socialized medicine in South Carolina. Globalist firm BCG has written plenty of reports here and here about the future of health care. We know their agenda. Why, then, is a conservative state buying into a policy that is certain to bloat not only the budget, but also to increase constituents’ reliance on government health care and pharmaceuticals, marginalizes functional/integrated/natural medicine models, and increases state oversight and control over the private sector?

Interestingly enough, one of the recommendations in the BCG report directs the state to start making meaningful studies into the inner workings of these agencies to determine areas of overlap and how things could be made more efficient. Why the rush in passing this legislation? Why not take the time needed to study in depth these agencies and make necessary policy changes with a changeover of a system, as opposed to just throwing a whole slew of agencies that are likely operating at less-than-optimal capacity together and hoping for the best? I would hazard that a centralization like this is likely to overwhelm the person put in charge and the agencies will likely continue to operate as is for longer than necessary than if the proper thought and planning were put into this ahead of time. It’s ok to press the pause button and try to get things right before proceeding.