Health Care Reform Hijacked: Senators Seek Coverage for Alternative “Medicine”

Sometimes I just want to bash my head into a wall… remember how recently the results of a massive federal study were published, showing conclusively that over the last decade $2.5 billion was spent studying so-called alternative medicine (i.e. quackery) with the punchline that NO cures were found?

You would think, given this huge mountain of evidence displaying the ineffectiveness of the alt-med sCAM woo, that some people in the government would reconsider funding such useless nonsense.  Think again… alt-med true believer Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa – champion of the now infamous NCCAM woo-factory – has decided to move in exactly the opposite direction, by introducing legislation which would require health insurance companies to cover sCAM woo…

Naturopathic doctors, herbal healers, mind-body specialists, and acupuncturists often have been scorned by the US medical establishment, but growing numbers of Americans are seeking such care, and now an influential group of US senators believes the time has come to embrace an array of alternative therapies.

Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who is a longtime supporter of nontraditional medicine, is at the forefront of the effort to win insurance coverage for such providers as part of national healthcare legislation.

“It’s time to end the discrimination against alternative healthcare practices,’’ Harkin said at a congressional hearing.

Scientists Fight the sCAM Quacks

It seems that the current economic & political climate might be giving actual scientists the opportunity to take on a pseudoscience called CAM (Complementary & Alternative “Medicine”) – what I like to call sCAM – which has wormed its way into various U.S. medical institutions over the years.

As the Washington Post reports in a recent article…

The impending national discussion about broadening access to health care, improving medical practice and saving money is giving a group of scientists an opening to make a once-unthinkable proposal: Shut down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

The notion that the world’s best-known medical research agency sponsors studies of homeopathy, acupuncture, therapeutic touch and herbal medicine has always rankled many scientists. That the idea for its creation 17 years ago came from a U.S. senator newly converted to alternative medicine’s promise didn’t help.

This is great! Apparently, there is some belt-tightening going on at the National Institutes of Health, and the real scientists – you know, the ones who practice actual medicine – see a good opportunity to cut funding for the NCCAM woo.