THE BUREAUCRATS OF MEDICINE

(Oil on Canvas, 24" x 30", 61.5cm x 77cm)

"The Bureaucrats of Medicine" is Perez's most politically correct painting in this series. Over twenty-five percent of U.S. health-care costs go toward pushing paper. Government workers, insurance reimbursers. social-care providers, legal eagles, accountants, record keepers, receptionists, secretaries, and the members of associations, societies, and foundations, make up a larger group than doctors, nurses, pharmacologists, and therapists combined. The bueaucratic tail is wagging our health-care dog.

Perez' satirical genius comes through at its best in the centrally placed, villainous puppeteer, a caricature of Dickens' Scrooge, impairing the doctor and manipulating the puppet patients. While the nurses are helplessly buried in paperwork, the bureaucrats in Washington are above it all and arrogantly toasting their own good health. The chap riding the paper airplane enjoys it all, and is not the least bit bothered by the salvage yard of patients or the environmental destruction behind him. He must be one of the ubiquitous third-party providers, pragmatically capable of adjusting to the changing winds of medical economics.

Studies in Pencil

Initial "B"

Feeding the octopus

Moving the paper

Communing with the masses

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Last updated: 8 May 1998