Insurance for holistic approaches to medicine

THIS POLICY IS NOT EASY TO IMPLEMENT! I left my practice as a nurse and professor because I know that most of what I teach is not based on evidence, because the majority of evidence about most chronic disease has been left out of all medical curriculum. What little we do teach about it leaves out 2000 years of acupuncture/Chinese herbs, and so many other thoroughly researched holistic ways to prevent disease. How can you use insurance to cover these methods without sending doctors and nurses back to college to relearn all the research that was left out of their curriculum?

The only way I see this policy working is for insurances that are only holistic oriented to compete with the western medical insurance policies so people can take their pick. You canā€™t possibly mix them all under one umbrella because then you allow a western oriented mindset to tell holistic practitioners what they can and cannot do. I can only see FDA and government taking away what we do behind the scenes to keep people healthy in that case, because they would want to regulate what they do not understand. As a holistic practitioner please do NOT allow our practice to be regulated by western medicine!!!

Insurance-driven policies in work places has ruined our physician and nurse work in western medicine already. I learned in college how to delegate and that a nurse has to be rigorous in how he/she follows up-I had to know this for my board exams and licensure. Thenā€¦ā€¦insurance-driven hospital procedure ripped that all away from me as it asked me time and again to leave certain things for CNAs and only do other aspects of a nurseā€™s role. According to my license, I broke ethical boundaries in my hospital work all the time, just because the insurance demanded different things from the hospital than my license did. Do not put that onto holistic practices please!!!

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Insurance is outrageous. It may be better to get insurance out of medical care altogether. I will agree that there needs to be a way to make sure that the public can trust doctors, but if doctors have to pay high insurance, they pass the cost onto us and itā€™s just not working.

I wholeheartedly agree with these recommendations. I have seen numerous people completely reverse chronic conditions by weaning away from years (& even decades) on pharmaceutical drugs, through the use of
alternative protocols, therapies and nutraceuticals. Unfortunately many more were prevented from pursuing these changes because they couldnā€™t afford them, or werenā€™t covered by insurance plansā€¦ P.S. Medical schools should be mandated to spend substantial amount of time teaching nutrition.

agree

We also need more emphasis on physical therapy! Many times patients have to go though doctors and try medicines and procedures that may not help at all! Physical therapists are doctors of their field (DPT) and can treat many other ailments and illnesses than just musculoskeletal! Insurances, doctors, and pharma are the reason PTs donā€™t have direct access and cant order imaging. PT can help with so much more than we realize!

Also combine DENTAL and VISION on health insurance instead of having separate plans. How are my eyes and teeth not part of my overall health?

Yes, let us decide who and what about our health and where are money is used. Most are into vitamins and supplements but health insurance does not cover. You go to a Natural Grocer and the cost of good for you foods are so expensive. This needs to change.

This is a very important point!!! So how would we get help for the out of pocket expenses???

I agree, insurance companies should cover functional medicine rather than just conventional medicine.

Two different kinds of insurance here- medical and malpractice.

and on the other end, my friendā€™s grandfather had diabetes a major part of his life. His neighbor from mexico put him on to some Root of something tea for him to drink daily which CURED the diabetes and restored so many things that diabetes had started to destroy!

iā€™m still trying to find out which tea this was but Iā€™ve heard stories of people going to mexico and being healed naturally where in the US they only got worse and were stuck on pills piled on pills!

Coverage ~ Do you mean the amount you have to pay out of pocket? Or, are they flat out saying you are denied coverage of those services?

What do you suggest? How do we go about that?

Consider voting for this policy which will help this one:

I absolutely agree with this, itā€™s also give holistic medicine the support and research it needs to become mainstream!