CCT – Democrats in the Cape and Islands delegation are prodding fellow legislators to require insurers to provide benefits for certain kinds of acupuncture treatments.
The legislation – co-sponsored by state Reps. Timothy Madden, D-Nantucket; Cleon Turner, D-Dennis; and Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, among others – has drawn support from acupuncturists…
But the bill has proven prickly with physical therapists, fueling their ongoing feud with acupuncturists over a technique known as “dry needling.”
“To be perfectly honest, I know there is a controversy – you could even call it a turf war – over this issue of dry needling and whether it’s acupuncture or not,” Peake told the Times. “That’s a fight for another day.”
Acupuncture used to be considered experimental and “very unusual,” Peake said. With time, however, it has been embraced within the medical community – yet “most, if not all, coverage plans don’t cover it now,” she said.
This one could get ugly folks! A battle for the ages! Acupuncturists and Physical Therapists in a good old fashioned political wrangling that exactly 8 people care about!
I think I am going to have to side with the acupuncturists on this one. I mean jabbing people with needles is kind of their thing. Physical therapists may go to school for years to study the human body, but they didn’t go to needle prick class right? You can’t just go around doing something “experimental and very unusual” without proper training.
This would be like if podiatrists starting practicing voodoo and using chicken blood and powdered tree bark ointment to remove bunions. Don’t think for a second that a bunch of Haitian witch doctors wouldn’t get their reps to file legislation to stop it.
It would be one thing if we were talking about some non scientific medicinal practice, but we are talking about poking people with needles here. It has been embraced in the medical community to the point that “most, if not all, coverage plans don’t cover it…”
P.S. “Prodding fellow legislators”? “The bill has proven prickly”? I see you what you did there.
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