Here is what the President of the AOA had to say about it.
February 5, 2007
Letters to the Editor
TIME Magazine
Time-Life Building
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10020-1393
Dear Editor:
I'm deeply disappointed in the negative portrayal given by Scott Haig, M.D., of osteopathic physicians (D.O.s) or "osteopath manipulators" as he calls them in his article "Doctors Without Dollars" (Feb. 2, 2007). With nearly 47 million uninsured Americans, why would you devalue an entire medical profession - especially one that is rooted in producing family physicians who practice in rural and urban medically underserved areas?
As one of only two groups of physicians in the U.S. who are fully licensed to prescribe medicine and practice in all specialty areas, D.O.s face the same struggles that M.D.s do - and apparently more with inaccurate depictions like the one in this article.
In fact, D.O.s have been advocating for solutions to issues such as Medicare physician reimbursement cuts and medical liability insurance increases so that the future generations of physicians have fewer obstacles to overcome.
To lump osteopathic physicians in the NRWAT or the "nothing-really-works-anyway-therapies" group is a disservice to the 59,000 D.O.s who have served the medical needs of Americans across the nation. Furthermore, I doubt that Dr. Haig would put the former physician to President George H.W. Bush, the former surgeon general of the U.S. Army and the physicians for professional sports teams such as the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs - all of whom are D.O.s - into that group.
Moreover, D.O.s are not just "manipulators." They are physicians who receive extra training to use their hands to diagnose and treat their patients using a technique called osteopathic manipulative treatment in addition to delivering babies, performing brain surgery or serving as family physicians to the underserved. If you are interested in learning the facts about D.O.s and osteopathic medicine, I urge you to visit
www.osteopathic.org.
Sincerely,
John A. Strosnider, D.O.