A Broader Definition Of Health Care

latimes.com:

Acupuncturists, dietary-supplement makers and other alternative health practitioners, some of whose treatments are considered unproven by the medical establishment, would be brought more squarely into the mainstream of American medicine under the health legislation now before the Senate.

Read the whole story: latimes.com

Comments

[Victoria-nola]

04:04 AM on 12/08/2009

I'm very glad to see this provision in the Senate bill. I personally was struck with repetitive stress conditions in my hands and arms in the early 90s. Western medicine immobilized my hands and arms in braces and they spent several months trying one brace after another as I lost more and more function and lived in pain, while the muscles in my arms atrophied, completely the wrong approach. Finally I was told that my only hope was surgery, which had a 50% chance of success. By chance I saw a sports-medicine chiropractor, and immediately responded, which gave me hope. Through her conservative treatments I came back to be able to function and make a living again. Mine is just one example of the ways in which Western medicine fails and won't admit they don't know how to approach the problem. We need to work with the full range of health practices.

btw, those medical problems happened under Workers Compensation, and those programs appear to be more evidence-based than regular health insurers. They see the results and are interested in the swiftest, least expensive route to getting workers back on the job.

[Victoria-nola]

03:55 AM on 12/08/2009

I'm very glad to hear the Senate bill contains this provision. The phrase "considered unproven by the medical establishment" is fraught and needs to be unpacked. The most important thing to know is that many doctors, especially the younger generation, are more interested in learning about all treatments that work and less interested in protecting the turf of Western Industrial Medicine. Know too that insurance companies have slowly been extending coverage to some alternative treatments, but they are exceedingly slow and are entrenched in turf protection. Alternative treatments are almost almost always less expensive than Western treatments and prevent the need for expensive and invasive Western treatments such as surgeries and side-effect ridden drugs, and this is a problem for a profit-driven industry. A Western medical specialty called "evidence-based medicine" is the place where alternatives that show evidence of healing people are used in conjunction with Western approaches, and prevention forms the basis of its approach. This area of medicine has the most hope of real health for people, not just reeling from one invasive treatment to the next as quality of life deteriorates.

[LizardSF]

03:32 PM on 12/07/2009

Riiiight.... "considered unproven by the medical establishment", in much the same way that geocentrism is "considered unproven by the astronomy establishment". I support the right of adults to engage in any health practices they wish, providing they do not endanger others (i.e, knowingly spreading communicable diseases because the Germ Theory of Disease is 'just a theory'). I don't see why I should have to pay for it, though. (And I'm sure the hippies would be equally leery of having the government regulate this week's quackery.)

[wdw505]

08:39 AM on 12/07/2009

that figures