Should insurance companies cover "faith based healing"?

[Atlas14]

Insurance coverage for faith based healing defeats the purpose of using faith to heal, so I say no.

 

[illram]

I'd like to know a) why the heck the dems would put this in there if they aren't getting any repubs to sign on to the health care bill anyway (unless this is a different bill) and b) how it determines what constitutes "faith based healing," as anything forcing insurance companies to cover certain religious healing and not others sounds pretty unconstitutional to me.

Oh yeah and this is stupid anyway. OP lost me at "like any other medical program."

 

[carlosMM]

re acupuncture:

I saw several quite solid studies showing acupuncture to work - however, only for selected treatments, not for the wide range of stuff people love to use it for.

It works well for treating muscle-based or -caused pain, by inducing relaxation of the muscles, and in some causes of nerve-irritation caused pain. All the rest..... well, lemme just point out that placing the needles in the wrong place does not matter for e.g. tooth aches, or using 'fake needles', i.e. pretending to stick a needle in which in reality is just a piece of metal glued to the skin without penetrating it. Thus, placebo is as good as acupuncture in many cases.

 

[El_Machinae]

Here's the name of the study. There are quite few responses and an errata on pubmed

"German Acupuncture Trials (GERAC) for chronic low back pain: randomized, multicenter, blinded, parallel-group trial with 3 groups."

 

[Lord Gay]

Insurance companies should be free to cover non-standard medical practices if they are so inclined, but the state should not force them to cover any non scientific medical practice.

This post is perfection.

I'd be worried about faith healing being offered, or even required, as your medical option. "You think you're having a heart attack Mr. Gay? I'm terribly sorry, but the nearest hospital is ten miles away, and your policy doesn't cover medical procedures that far away. I do have some good news though. There's a church not two blocks from you! Plus, they have evening hours!"

If faith healing became equal to medical healing, what's to stop insurance companies and HMOs from only allowing that as your option?

 

[ori]

re acupuncture:

I saw several quite solid studies showing acupuncture to work - however, only for selected treatments, not for the wide range of stuff people love to use it for.

It works well for treating muscle-based or -caused pain, by inducing relaxation of the muscles, and in some causes of nerve-irritation caused pain. All the rest..... well, lemme just point out that placing the needles in the wrong place does not matter for e.g. tooth aches, or using 'fake needles', i.e. pretending to stick a needle in which in reality is just a piece of metal glued to the skin without penetrating it. Thus, placebo is as good as acupuncture in many cases.

Here's the name of the study. There are quite few responses and an errata on pubmed

"German Acupuncture Trials (GERAC) for chronic low back pain: randomized, multicenter, blinded, parallel-group trial with 3 groups."

color me much less sceptical
as for my point about the German system: while I still stand by it mostly - this leaves me in a corner mumbling something about grandfathering in drugs with no proof of benefit and the fact treatments not expressly prohibited can be covered by the German system - but don't have to be if they are not expressly covered. So that weakened that one quite a bit... Though I apparently was very successful in threadjacking

 

[carlosMM]

as for my point about the German system:

You also have to remember that the German system (like many others) favors old, bad drugs over new, better drugs - for example, today you would never get a regulatory approval for Aspirin. Never. Ever. Oh, maybe you could sneak it through for anti-coagulation, but for pain?

But much better pain medications (e.g. Bextra) had to go, because the stesting is so much better. Aspirin probably has a kill ratio ten times as high, but who's to pay for comparative studies?

So the system favors the old products that have run out patents. Cheap at first glance, but that's not the whole story.

So why should we be surprised when other issues are amiss, too?

 

[ori]

You also have to remember that the German system (like many others) favors old, bad drugs over new, better drugs - for example, today you would never get a regulatory approval for Aspirin. Never. Ever. Oh, maybe you could sneak it through for anti-coagulation, but for pain?

But much better pain medications (e.g. Bextra) had to go, because the stesting is so much better. Aspirin probably has a kill ratio ten times as high, but who's to pay for comparative studies?

So the system favors the old products that have run out patents. Cheap at first glance, but that's not the whole story.

So why should we be surprised when other issues are amiss, too?

actually the system only favors products that have run out of patent protection AND been approved as a drug prior to that (and even better: prior to the current drug regulations, which in most cases means prior to the 1970s). Compounds that have run out of patent protection but have not been approved for use as a drug and then are found to have some potential use have zero chance of being approved simply because there would be no one to invest the kind of money necessary for that