If you have been through the following sequence this article may answer some questions.
A history of unnecessary medical tests, incorrect diagnosis, failed medical treatment, expense, suffering, the risk of harm from medical treatment. Later, following chiropractic care for a subluxation related disorder the patient has a successful outcome. Such patients ask why Medicare reimbursed fees relating to the medical failure but not to the chiropractic success.
In most instances it is wrong to impose medical intervention in the sequence of getting a subluxation related disorder and having chiropractic care. Ideally for those patients chiropractic would be the first choice, available in public health and gain Medicare reimbursement.
Both government and media portray medical treatment, such as drugs and/or surgery as the best choice for effective, safe, cost effective public health. The decades of negative medical news about chiropractic have been successful in making chiropractic an option of last choice.
Many failed medical patients turn to chiropractic as a last resort. Many express satisfaction with our facilities, consultation, examination, report of findings, patient education and outcome. These experiences contradict medicine’s negative image of chiropractic. As they realize whose interest medical opposition really serves, patients share a sense of betrayal.
Government sponsored marketing arrangements unnecessarily expose millions of public patients who have subluxation related disorders, to iatrogenic risk. Iatrogenesis refers to harm arising from medical treatment as distinct from the patient’s disorder. The apparent incredible largely unreported extent of iatrogenesis justifies looking at risk first.
A groundbreaking study conducted by US researchers, including three MDs and a PhD, states: “The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.”
The Australian John Archer’s 1995 book, Bad Medicine quotes some of the medical data about iatrogenic harm and extrapolates that Australia may have about 50,000 iatrogenic deaths and 750,000 permanent injuries per year. Comparatively, chiropractic is remarkably safe.
According to those ballpark estimates the entire spectrum of iatrogenic harm, accumulating over decades, may far exceed all of the deaths which have occurred among our serving defence force personnel in all of the wars in which Australia has been a combatant. Our daily news papers and broadcasts have not published the entire spectrum of iatrogenic harm or warned of an apparent iatrogenic epidemic.
Intentional ignorance about the entire spectrum of iatrogenic harm is common among those who create, sponsor and publicise the services and products creating it. Their mutual silence betrays public and patient interest. Please take the time to ask your MPs for WA’s and/or Australia’s full profile of the entire spectrum of iatrogenic harm.
Now, let us share a history lesson about government sponsored marketing arrangements.
Long ago people in power restructured one illness industry into a massive public health marketplace and a small private health marketplace.
About thirty years ago, the US court case, Wilk v AMA, discovered a medical conspiracy to use a set of trade barriers to first contain and eventually eliminate the profession of chiropractic. Elimination of a competing profession = money and power.
Australia’s governments use a set of trade barriers similar to those in the USA. Restraints bar our trade within the public health marketplace while containing it within the private health market place. This restraint of trade precludes chiropractors from competing with the medical profession in the major marketplace. No competition = money and power.
The information restraint: Have you heard the derogatory references to chiropractors such as ‘quacks’, ‘charlatans’, ‘unscientific cultists’, ‘lay practitioners’ and ‘practitioners of exclusive dogma’? The US medical conspiracy was a major source of lies, deceit and myths about chiropractic. In Australia, disinformation continues to be an effective way to restrain trade.
The AMA "ethic" restraint: Once forbade professional association between chiropractors and medical practitioners, so no medical referrals. This restraint still has a powerful negative effect.
The gatekeeper restraint: Gives members of a competing profession that has a history of anticompetitive conduct the right to decide if potential patients can trade with its competitors. Chiropractors report there are relatively few spontaneous referrals from medical gatekeepers.
The access restraints: Deny those public patients who have subluxation-related disorders appropriate access to chiropractic care within taxpayer-funded health care facilities, such as hospitals, prisons, and public health care programs.
The legislative restraints: Negatively influence a great deal of legislation, directly or indirectly, relevant to chiropractic, in ways that deny Australia’s chiropractic community fair and just treatment under the law.
The economic restraint: Is reflected in the bias within Medicare, which effectively denies the general population of chiropractic patients their direct access to an appropriate amount of chiropractic care. The government in WA has denied chiropractors public hospital privileges on the justification of no Medicare reimbursement.
I trust this explains why those public patients who have subluxation related disorders are denied access to appropriate chiropractic care while incurring unnecessary, suffering and expense while being exposed to inappropriate and potentially dangerous drugs and/or surgery.
Betraying public and patient interest in exchange for protecting vested interests is a central evil of containment.
As usual, I welcome feed back about the foregoing.
Michael R