Should Medicare and Medicaid stop paying for Chiropractic?

[drusso]

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https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/co...d-and-abuse-by-chiropractors-saving-billions/

"As one solution, Congress could decide to cover spinal manipulation by chiropractors to the same extent it covers spinal manipulation by a physical therapist, doctor of osteopathy or medical doctor for medically necessary treatment of back pain, but it would need to exclude the subluxation as a proper diagnosis. Even in cases where spinal manipulation may be an appropriate treatment for back pain, it should not be based on a diagnosis of the non-existent chiropractic subluxation."

 

[pastafan]

British Journal of Sports medicine:

Chiropractic spinal manipulation for back pain

Back pain sufferers from more than 60 countries consult chiropractors.1 A booklet by the British Chiropractic Association boldly states that “95% of back pain is mechanical in origin, and can be treated by a chiropractor in a primary care setting”.2 Yet there are many who doubt such promotional statements. A recent, perhaps more sober, assessment of the data reads differently: “43 randomised trials of spinal manipulation for treatment of acute, subacute and chronic low back pain have been published. 30 favoured manipulation over the comparison treatment in at least a subgroup of patients and the other 13 found no significant differences”.3 However, these trials used mostly non-chiropractic spinal manipulation. The only systematic review of exclusively chiropractic spinal manipulation concluded that “the available RCTs provided no convincing evidence of the effectiveness of chiropractic for acute or chronic low back pain”.4 Since the publication of this article, the emerging trial data have not tended to be encouraging. The effectiveness of chiropractic spinal manipulation for back pain is thus at best uncertain. More specifically, for osteoporotic back pain no trial data are available at present. Similarly it is unclear whether this approach is superior to other treatments used for this back pain.5 These statements are true regardless of the many national guidelines that seem to suggest the opposite.