Yet another whack at those dastardly quacks

iMitchy says:

03:12pm | 12/10/11

Some correlation maybe, but I don’t know about a “high correlation”.
Hell, I’ll drink a whole a bottle and not eat a thing.

It is upsetting when you get sick or injured and find out about the range of procedures you require that your cover doesn’t cover, to only later discover that you get a rebate for being poked with pins or buying buddahs…
I’m on a plan that covers my whole family because it is cheaper than individual cover, but that also means that technically I pay for myself and my one year old daughter to both be covered for obstetrics.

Andrew says:

09:57am | 13/10/11

Do I detect a quote from Tim Minchin here? From the beat poem “Storm”

iMicthy says:

03:28pm | 12/10/11

It would be fair to say that if covering these therapies does bring in a whole lot of new customers then technically it should dilute premiums making it cheaper for us all.
On the other hand, most people wouldn’t go to a doctor unless they were injured or ill. Alternative therapies are usually harmless if used when not ill and that opens a door whereby a homeopath (or other kook) can tell you that something is wrong with you and to take these, these and these and come back in two weeks. Most people that I know who use alternative therapies have “ongoing chronic health issues” - that appear to me as mild or non-existent - and seem to visit their quack a lot.
I wonder how much is being paid out on alternative therapy claims vs how much is coming in - in the form of premiums from these new customers…

iMitchy says:

03:30pm | 12/10/11

Yeah, I spelled my name wrong there… fast fingers….

Shane* says:

08:05am | 12/10/11

Fiddler, if you can tell me one company that does, I will be switching today and sending you a muffin basket.

marley says:

08:08am | 12/10/11

Not so sure about that Fiddler.  I belatedly took out private health insurance last year so did a fair bit of comparison shopping.  I wanted a reasonable level of coverage (not getting any younger, but no pre-existing conditions) and every package that had the things I wanted also had complementary medical treatment packages as a part of it.

Shane* says:

11:34am | 12/10/11

Really Tory? Which provider? The policies offered by my provider all forcibly cover me for: “acupuncture, herbalism, naturopathy, homeopathy, nutrition, remedial massage, myotherapy, bowen therapy & shiatsu”

DrRachie says:

07:30pm | 12/10/11

I called MBF a while back and asked to opt out and I was quoted a more expensive price. Yes, you can pick and choose but it will cost you more. I called a few other providers and they didn’t even allow opt-out.

KH says:

08:18am | 12/10/11

If you want to believe in nonsense of any kind, feel free - the rest of us just don’t like having to pay for it, which we do via our premiums.

Nic says:

08:40am | 12/10/11

That’s fine for you.

You can believe what you want, if you want your medicine to consist of the magical healing powers of crystals and Vodoo that’s great. You can pay for it yourself, you can support it yourself. Alternative medicine worked really well for Steve Jobs when he caught an entirely preventable cancer after all.

You’re free to believe whatever idiocy you want and also free to spend all your money on it. That’s the free market.

But if these remedies have been proven not to work, why do I have to pay for them? Why should I subsidize your non-medicine?

Nicko says:

08:20am | 12/10/11

Make up your mind Mahhrat. Do you hold yourself accountable, or do you think the government should help you? If you hold yourself responsible then you should be responsible for fixing your obesity yourself, or at least dealing with the health issues down the track.

Mahhrat says:

12:23pm | 12/10/11

@Nick, I hold myself accountable, but yes I could use a hand - I’m obviously not going a great job of it myself, am I?

Nicko says:

01:08pm | 12/10/11

And what do you propose the government do to help obese people who are obese only becaue they are too lazy to make their own lifestyle changes?

Pleasure O'Reilly says:

07:59am | 12/10/11

Education is most definitely important. So is research and medicine that has been proven (and is required) by stringent standards to work - but this article is discussing the fraud, danger and waste that is the alt. Medicine industry - which apparently does not have the same standards placed upon it.

marley says:

08:11am | 12/10/11

This article is about medical insurance, not health per se.  If you are wonderfully healthy and don’t need medical insurance, that’s fine.  But if you are getting older, or have medical issues, and have medical insurance, why should you have to pay for people to have treatments that don’t work?

Shane* says:

08:14am | 12/10/11

“The modern ‘medical’ industry is obviously doing such a fantastic job these days - very little sickness, we are well on top of disease - yeah right!”

We’re living longer than at any time in history.
We no longer worry about polio or smallpox (I am thankfully too young remember them as the scourge they were).
Cancer survival is consistently and constantly rising.
People with chronic disease like diabetes are living longer with better quality of life.
We have drugs to help people with high blood pressure.
We can save babies born months premature.
We can physically open up a person’s heart to repair a valve that malfunctions.
We are unlocking genetic codes to further our understanding of diseases and how to prevent them (BRCA1 and BRCA2 being the highest profile examples).
We can give sound to a deaf person.
We can give sight to a blind person.
As a society, we may seem like we have more sick people around, largely because we have more PEOPLE and those people are living with disease longer.

Bryan, be thankful for the medical industry. There’s a good chance it’s the reason you’re alive.

MD says:

08:56am | 12/10/11

@Shane, the biggest reason for our increased life expectancy compared to hundreds of years ago is modern engineering, not medicine. The rest of your points are correct though.

Robert S McCormick says:

09:04am | 12/10/11

Bryan, maybe it is all those 100s of lab-produced additives which as listed on food packaging which are causing all that ill-health - yes, the pharmaceutical co’s win both ways for they make those chemicals which people eat & then provide the chemicals to address the illnesses they cause! But let’s not blame the medical people for they treat the results they don’‘t cause the problems.
What sort of “food” are manufacturers making if when you look at the ingredients panel you are told that, in addition to Salt & Sugar - almost natural Flavour Enhancers, they have added 3, 4 or 5 other “Flavour Enhancers”. They then add a couple of Preservatives, a kaleidescope of Colours, another two of Natural or Nature-Identical Flavours and, without exception, they are ALL made in some laboratory using such nice materials as the by-products of Crude Oil, you know thats the stuff petrol & diesel is made out of, Coal & it’s by-products, synbtheticall made Trans Fats, Formaldehyde, heavy metals such as Copper Chloryphyll etc. You name them they are all there.
Sure we have a resonsibility to look after our own health & the right to use whatever systems we want to do so but just as ‘conventional, chemical?, ‘medicos are required to be thoroughly trained over a long period so, too, should all those who want to treat other people & the medications they prescribe should also be subject to every bit as much testing & scrutiny as those prescribed by your local GP. Yes, sometimes those medications have unexpected side-effects (Thalidomide?), sometime they have an unexpected side-effect when combined with other medications - including the so-called “Natural Therapiy” type medications people take & of which their GP know nothing about when they prescribe some new medication.
Certainly diagnostic proceedures are ever -more exact & can detect hitherto undetectable problems but I don’t think that is the reason that seemingly increasingly more people are being diagnosed with serious or life-threatening illnesses. We have discussed this with framily & friends & we are convinced that these problems are being caused by food manufacturers & all the synthetic, lab-produced poisons they are adding to their products. That’s the reason we are now far more discriminatory in what we buy. The more ingredients, the further out the Use By or Best Before dates are the more we avoid them.
You know that UHT-treated Milk sold in Supermarkets?
Our cat loves Fresh, Full Cream Milk & Cream.
When UHT-treated Milk & Cream came on the market we tried it on the cat. She sniffed both, walked away & would not touch it!
For us that spoke volumes about both those Milk products & made us decide not to buy them or any other of those treated products such as Fruit & Vegetable juices.

Adam DIver says:

09:28am | 12/10/11

@ MD, can you elaborate? Are you referring to the availability and quality of food or something else? I am genuinely curious BTW

marley says:

04:08pm | 12/10/11

@Adam Diver - I suspect MD is talking about sewers.  They’ve made a huge difference to health.  So has piped clean water and the flush toilet.  But sanitation doesn’t entirely account for the improved life expectancy, nor does better quality food - neither had any on smallpox or polio, for example. Vaccinations made the difference there.

marley says:

08:16am | 12/10/11

@Johor - there is not to my knowledge a single clinical trial conducted under proper conditions which supports the efficacy of homeopathy.  You may believe in it, but there is nothing whatsoever to show that it works.  Sure there are no side effects - because there are no effects, period.

And if homeopathy has been so effective for the 200 years of its existence, why is it that life expectancy has only increased in the last 50 years or so, with the introduction of antibiotics and vaccinations?

As for your own gimmicky bit about wine, the apparent benefits of red (not white) wine have zero to do with “getting drunk.”

reddragon says:

08:16am | 12/10/11

Agree totally about the lack of side efftcs. Tthe only likely side effct from homoeopathy is that you are likely to drown. It’s just water. When homoeopathy subjects itself to the same stringent levels of research applied to prescription drugs I’ll buy it. Throwing out claims such as “it’s been around for two hundred years” doesn’t cut it. VooDoo has been around longer - would you use that?

roger says:

09:07am | 12/10/11

One does not need to take an introductory class on horse shit to know that it stinks.

Shane* says:

09:00am | 12/10/11

Why would you change your mind? Chiropracty is hokum.

James1 says:

10:43am | 12/10/11

“Why do you think the health insurers offer these products? It’s because the vast majority of consumers want them!!!”

Great.  There goes what was left of my faith in the vast majority of people.  Thanks for that.

Every day I read something which makes me hanker for Plato’s republic.

marley says:

01:07pm | 12/10/11

No, dear boy, I expect the AMA and the rest of the rather large community of sceptics want “natural therapies” removed from medical insurance coverage because they see no particular evidence that any of it is in fact “medical.”  Why blast Big Pharma, which at least has to submit evidence that its products are safe and effective, and give a free ride to Big Herbal, which doesn’t.

There have been snake oil salesmen and witch doctors around forever.  That’s no reason to subsidize them through my insurance payments.

Shane says:

02:21pm | 12/10/11

@ marley. Trevor has a point, mate.  And its not rebutted by condescendingly calling him ‘dear boy’.

The AMA is a lobby group for doctors.  It’s in doctors’ interests to reduce the money spent on alternative therapies, so that more money can be spent on - you guessed it - doctors! 

To blindingly believe that everything sprouted by the AMA is entirely evidence based and provided for purely altruistic reasons is naive.  They have an agenda just like every other lobby group.

marley says:

03:22pm | 12/10/11

@Shane - you missed my point.  You can’t accuse one side of the debate for being self-interested while totally ignoring the self interest of the other side. 

Trevor sees a conspiracy by interested parties to keep alternative medicine off the table, but doesn’t see that alternative medicine is an even more interested party trying to keep it on the table.  If the AMA and big Pharma have a vested interest, what about the assorted natural therapy institutions and big Herbal?  It’s certainly in their interest to get their programs covered by insurance so of course they’re going to promote it.

And whatever the shortcomings of the medical profession, at least they can point to clinical trials as evidence that their solutions do work, whereas the alternative practitioners can point to nothing but anecdote.  Why aren’t you and Trevor demanding that the alt med crowd submit the same level of evidence of efficacy that drug companies are required to do?

And the proof of efficacy or otherwise isn’t in what the AMA says;  it’s in what the medical and scientific journals say.  There’s more than enough material in PubMed on clinical trials of a number of alternative therapies to convince me they should never be part of a “medical” scheme.  The naivety is not in trusting the AMA (which I don’t) but in trusting some huckster with an unproven concoction to sell.  And that a homeopath or naturopath is less self-interested than a doctor.

iansand says:

12:48pm | 12/10/11

Voltaire said that medicine is the art of entertaining the patient while nature takes its course.

Shane* says:

01:18pm | 12/10/11

You’re either misquoting your nuerologist or he’s an idiot. Thousands of studies have been conducted into alternative treatments. There are literally billions of dollars waiting in the wings for the first company to prove efficacy* in an alternative treatment.

*Efficacy above and beyond already-established conventional medicines.

http://xkcd.com/836/

marley says:

01:21pm | 12/10/11

Well, actually there have been plenty of studies, including double-blinded tests, on various “natural” medicines. If any well-designed study proved homeopathy or acupuncture or the herb-of-the-week to work, there would be buckets of money in it for the purveyors.  Sadly, the studies show that many natural remedies do not work.  But they’re still being sold, and for buckets of money.  It’s losing that money, not gaining more, that keeps altmed from doing its own clinical trials.

As for those natural remedies that do show promise - Vitamin D, for example - they’re being studied around the world in all sorts of clinical trials.  So your doctor was certainly wrong on that point.

I doubt that any doctor would claim that modern medicine has all, or even many, of the answers (unlike your average homeopath, who believes he does have those answers).  But modern medicine at least tests theories and potential cures, and relies on evidence to understand what does and doesn’t work.  Alternative medicine might stumble across something that works by accident, but it’s just as likely to stumble across something that’s harmful and not know it.  Mostly, it just sells products that do no particular good at all.  Except to the pockets of the alt med companies.

reddragon says:

02:33pm | 12/10/11

If you get sick enough you will try anything, and I mean anything, to get better. Some years back I got extremely ill with recurrent chest infections that antibiotics and other treatments could not seem to touch. Six months treatment from a Chinese herbalist and I was better. The ‘soups’ that I drank tasted like crap but only the good ones, the others were worse.

Recently I found the ‘prescriptions’, had some made up by a herbalist and took them to a biochemist friend who kindly used his lab to analyse the product. Without boring you with the detail, I had fundamentally consumed plant based wallet lightener for six months.

So what cured me? Probably six months of no plane travel spent largely working from home away from air conditioning and other people gave my body time to heal itself.

I can understand why you want to believe that the alt.med cured your son when mainstream medicine seemed to be failing but I really doubt that it did. I also understand why you would go down that path if all else seemed to be failing but in the end a rational and scientific approach will win out. Thankfully I have not shared my herbal experience with friends so nobody has endangered their health based on my own experience.

Sometimes it is just simply time and our bodies immune system that does the work but more often it is modern medicine and pharmaceuticals that allow that to happen.

The wise specialist who treated me indulged me on the herbs but also made sure that I kept up my exercise regime and the other sensible things he prescribed.

Shane* says:

03:31pm | 12/10/11

That would be fine if the only people using alt med were people with vague and irritating conditions… But a major hurdle is the all-too-common occurance of a cancer patient turning to alt med and effectively signing their own death certificate in the process.

Google “Penelope Dingle” and you’ll see the consequences of ‘harmless’ alternative medicine.

marley says:

07:56am | 13/10/11

@Johor - first, not all drugs and therapies are tested on animals. So you’re wrong there.  Some are, of course, but no one believes that the results of testing on a mouse translate directly to what will happen in a human.  That’s why so many drugs fail when it comes to the actual (human) clinical trials.  Development and testing of new drugs costs billions, and most of the drugs never make it to the market. So your first argument is simply incorrect. 

As for thalidomide, yes, that was a tragedy - but not in the USA, the biggest market of all, where the drug was never approved because the FDA thought it hadn’t been adequately tested.  Everyone is more cautious now.

We go back to the basic point that there is not a single trial or test which shows that homeopathy actually works.  All the trials that have been done show it as nothing more than the placebo effect at best.  Sure, patients like homeopaths who have the time to spend with them.  That in itself probably introduces something of the placebo effect. 

As for medicine having only a palliative effect:  well, if you’d ever had bacterial pneumonia in both lungs, and had it cleared by penicillinor had tenosynovitis eliminated by a strong dose of steroids you would have a different opinion.  And vaccinations have done more for human health in the last century than all the homeopaths who have ever lived on this planet.