AOM in the News

Elisa Behnk, AAAOM-SO Vice President of Communications

Acupuncture and Oriental medicine made news this summer. Seemingly a random congregation of events, these stories when taken together remind us that as AOM students we have an important legacy being handed to us, ours to shepherd forward.

Dr. Miriam Lee Leaves a Legacy
I am struck by the simplicity and dogged devotion of Dr. Miriam Lee LAc, OMD in tending her patients. Dr. Lee, who died June 28, 2009 (born 1926), led a revolution in health care for California, setting the platform for other states to follow. Currently, acupuncture is licensed in 45 states. When Miriam Lee arrived in the United States in 1969, acupuncture was still illegal across the country. Yet Dr. Lee’s acupuncture treatments created undeniable results and for over 40 years she remained an irrepressible practitioner, student and advocate for patients’ rights to acupuncture. (see In Memoriam in July’s Qi Unity Report)

In her autobiography, Insights of a Senior Acupuncturist, she wrote: “At the trial, my patients filled the courtroom. There were so many of them the officials didn’t know what to do with them all. Day after day they returned to protest being denied access to the only medicine which had helped them, and to insist that they had a right to choose to be treated with acupuncture.”

What better indicator of AOM validity than judicial halls overflowing with well people well served by acupuncture? Dr. Miriam Lee set a standard for us all to follow—as students, practitioners, educators and activists. She set in motion a something that is ours to carry forth. Do you resonate?

NCCAM Survey Conclusions Are Questionable
Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in 2007, according to survey results announced on July 30, 2009, by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). According to Costs of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Frequency of Visits to CAM Practitioners: United States 2007, $11.9 billion was spent by Americans on CAM practitioner visits in 2007, equivalent to approximately one-quarter of total out-of-pocket spending on physician visits.

The study goes on to note that CAM accounts for approximately 1.5% of total health care expenditures ($2.2 trillion) and 11.2% of total out-of-pocket expenditures on health care in the United States (conventional out-of-pocket is $286.6 billion; CAM out-of-pocket is $33.9 billion).

Specifically focusing on acupuncture, the report states:

Despite the overall decrease in visits to CAM providers in 2007 compared with 1997, visits to acupuncturists, a progressively more regulated and professionalized CAM provider group, increased over this same time period, with 17.6 million visits estimated for 2007 (29.2 visits per 1,000 adults), or three times that observed in 1997 (27.2 visits per 1,000 adults).

The increase for acupuncture may in part be due to the greater number of states that license this practice and a corresponding increase in the number of licensed practitioners in 2007 compared with 1997, as well as increased insurance coverage for these therapies.

Large numbers of articles in the lay press about the benefits of acupuncture were published during this period, increasing awareness in the general population. Together, greater opportunity and increased awareness may explain much of the observed increase in adult use the acupuncture.

While the report presents acupuncture growth as “three times that observed in 1997,” CAM-watching Integrator Blog publisher John Weeks questions the veracity of comparing 2007 data with 1997 data, which also concludes that CAM visits have dropped 50% overall. The two data sets are apples and oranges. Weeks states in his August 4 column (http://theintegratorblog.com): “The 2007 data contain findings that may be ammunition for CAM's opponents, if they are compared to data developed by Harvard's David Eisenberg, MD in 1997. Despite caveats that methods of the two surveys were different, Eisenberg's work, published in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] in 1998, is referenced on page one of the NCCAM/CDC paper.”

The disparities of sample-gathering methodologies and metrics, as well as sample sizes convincingly render the 10-year comparison moot. However, the new 2007 findings are interesting in themselves and likely will serve as a base plate for future studies.

Check out the easy-to-read 15-page report for yourself.

Where is AOM in Healthcare Reform?
Listening with a vigilant ear to hear strains of “acupuncture” during endless healthcare reform debates and town hall meetings? With all the bluster and blare of big money and super-sized interest groups it’s easy to miss the sotto voce references to AOM in the legislature’s summer-stock presentation of “Healthcare in America II.”

The July 13 AAAOM Legislative Activity Report provides a look at the behind-the-scenes work necessary to keep the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act of 2009 (HR646) moving forward. It notes that “what is going through Congress right now is only an insurance reform bill, not a health care reform bill.”

While AAAOM lobbyists Sam Brunelli and Beth Clay are focused on improving traction for HR646, their ears are to the ground inside Washington and reveal that beyond HR646 additional pieces of legislation are in the works that directly or indirectly refer to AOM:

For details on weekly legislative activity on our behalf, the 29-page AAAOM Legislative Activity Report presents our lobbyists’ first 90 days on the job.