I’m a medical worker, and I’ve been trying to read about the history of chiropractice. It’s fascinating to me how the field was started as a spiritual practice. But with the background of chiropractic care being challenged by modern science, and spinal manipulation being disproven to have any benefits, how is chiro so mainstream today? It’s covered by health insurance, even though medical researchers are regularly publishing data that disproves the benefits. DISCLAIMER: IM NOT TRYING TO HATE ON ANYTHING, I’m genuinely interested in the history and how the practice became so mainstream with a somewhat unsteady foundation.
In: Biology
This basically comes down lobbying. If insurance covers something, then it is given legitimacy and made less expensive to try.
The Chiropractic Industry’s lobbyists were able to gain influence with lawmakers during the 1960s and 1970s and, ultimately, get Chiropractic care covered in Medicare by the early 1970s.
Some very large and influential states have also mandated private insurers cover Chiropractic care, which made insurers more likely to cover it as a standard. These states include California, New York, Florida and Texas.
Once something is covered by insurance, it is seen as legitimized medicine. Even though Chiropractors are not medical doctors, and even though Chiropractic care gets mixed-at-best results from unbiased studies, it doesn’t generally cause harm and it has a lot of momentum (and legal protection) that leads to it being locked into American culture.
Latest Answers