Pages

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Say A Prayer for You and Me and You and You and That'll Be $756.00, Please

Ah, now some sort of medical reform bill (or whatever this thing is that’s wandering around the halls of Congress is calling itself,) is now ready for Loopholes, Logrolling and Pork Larding.

The first special little “addition” to pop up in the LA Times, a story by Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger reporting from Washington, is this: “Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.

“The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.

“The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments – which substitute for or supplement medical treatments – on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against ‘religious and spiritual healthcare.’

It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill – Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.”

The story further noted that “Kerry’s spokeswoman, Whitney Smith, disputed that insurers would be forced to cover prayers. Instead, she said, ‘the amendment would prevent insurers from discriminating against benefits that qualified as spiritual care if the care is recognized by the IRS as a legitimate medical expense. Plans are free to impose standards on spiritual and medical care as long as both are treated equally. It does not mandate that plans provide spiritual care.”

So, now the IRS will get between you and your doctor and Prayer Person? Orrin Hatch, a Republican Sarah Palin fanboy is supporting this? Talk about the original Death Panels. It doesn’t get more lethal than the IRS.

And of course, this amendment has riled scientists and other doctors. “Dr Norman Frost, a pediatrician and medical ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said the measure went against the goal of reducing healthcare costs by improving evidence-based medical practices. ‘They want a special exception for people who use unproved treatments , and they also want to get paid for it,’ he said. ‘They want people who use prayer to have it just automatically accepted as a legitimate therapy.’”

Yes, indeed, now it starts. Bring on the baster, the larding needle. What makes this amendment so strange – besides it’s blatantly, obviously lobbying for a tiny home-state (MA) religious sect (1,700 0 1,800 congregations world wide) is that there are lots of treatments that do, indeed work, that are unlikely to be covered by any insurance. Unless United Reiki Practitioners, Inc, or a National Acupuncture Union of America show up in the halls of congress with sacks of money.

Under our present system of “healthcare,” hypnosis, biofeedback, Sensory Experiencing Treatment, Acupuncture, Reiki, massage, certified nutritionists, physical therapists, and other therapies get short shrift or no shrift at all from insurers. Yet they do indeed work for many, many people, and are often cheaper than “traditional” treatments. And it’s only recently that chiropractic has been covered for certain procedures.

Yet the “why” and “how” these therapies work is little understood since there’s not been enough research into just what’s going on when the body-mind connection is challenged and enlisted in the healing process. Even now, researchers don’t quite know how placebos work, but they do work, often astonishingly well. So, we know very little at this point and too often our default position is to go with expensive, often dangerous “western medicine” when far simpler, far cheaper methods would do the trick.

In short, our “healthcare” system is sick in ways that have nothing to do with insurance companies, though it is made sicker by our method of paying very well for very poor outcomes. Until we take a serious look at our overall health – nutrition, diet, exercise, dental health, wellness/education efforts, preventative treatments and tests to catch and treat disease early, we’ll still stand mired in a very, very sick expensive system embedded in a very sick society that’s growing poorer by the day.

That’s a recipe that requires . . . prayer. Lots of it.

7 comments:

Watershed Mark said...

The government as currently practiced is sick in ways that have nothing to do with Healthcare.

The People are beginning to wake up...

Watershed Mark said...

Obama's, Reid's nor Pelosi's plan won't take effect until 2013.

Why?

(Why wasn't vacuum collection studied?)

Churadogs said...

The insurance industry OWNS congress (ditto Big Pharma) so the time lines were set my the lobbyists to maximize their benefit, not the public benefit. "Medicare for All or "medicare Part E" could be set up to take effect the moment a bill is signed. But that "public option" wasn't even allowed on the table.

Watershed Mark said...

No wonder why folks want to come to America.

Watershed Mark said...

The 2013 timeline is in place to provide cover for an incumbent re-run.

Alon Perlman said...

A society with sick politics
. . . prayer. Lots of it.

Every Lab test (diagnostic procedure), Medication, (Pill, topical unguent), Device, (From the mighty Q-tip, to the lowly pacemaker) Sold in the United States of America, Falls under the Jurisdiction of the FDA.

And with rare and very specific exceptions, Every one of those Items is required to be tested in controlled Clinical trials in human beings. Prior to marketing approval.

(And I just happened to work in design and execution of about fifty of those trials, running the gamut across the range of medical uses, and picked up Regulatory Affairs certification as an afterthought.)

Certain therapies such as surgical procedures operate differently but the science of measuring affect is the same.
Which brings us to prayer
Or prayer therapy.
Which is out there in Gooooogle land, but I’m going to rely on memory.

A trial was constructed, which scientifically compared patient groups medical responses to prayer or absence of prayer. The group that was told that people were volunteering to pray for them specifically, did well or better than the group that was not interested in having people pray for their recovery.

There is a lot of work in properly designing a trial to have valid controls against which to compare the test object. (In pet therapy, do you let the control group breath in “Pet dander” so as to make sure you are not seeing effects of allergy to cat hair, instead of the psychological boost effect you are looking for?)

Medical ethics 101, Can you tell people that they are being prayed for, and use that as a control group (Blind, Placebo). And not have anyone pray for them?

Word verification: prosti

As in; will you have to hock your prostetic leg in the pawn shop, in order to receive the prostitherapy that makes you feel better?

Churadogs said...

Alon Sez: "A trial was constructed, which scientifically compared patient groups medical responses to prayer or absence of prayer. The group that was told that people were volunteering to pray for them specifically, did well or better than the group that was not interested in having people pray for their recovery."
and sez:"Medical ethics 101, Can you tell people that they are being prayed for, and use that as a control group (Blind, Placebo). And not have anyone pray for them?"

That's the kind of test you'd have to set up, though. Pray for one set and tell them you're praying for them, then pray for another set but DON't tell them, then tell one group you're praying for them but DON't actually pray & etc. then correct for random events and see what the result are.

What we constantly overlook is the tremendous power of the placebo or "suggestion," and the body/mind connection. Powerful "medicine," that.