Acupuncture Benefits with Affordable Health Care

Big news! Back in August of this year, in a 5–4 split decision, the Supreme Court upheld almost all of the Obama administration’s heath care reform legislation—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)—including the law’s individual mandate requirements.

In short, this ruling, coupled with legislation currently under consideration in the California legislature, will likely mean that the vast majority of California’s 38 million residents will have a basic level of acupuncture coverage starting in 2014. In all likelihood, this base acupuncture coverage will be equivalent to the coverage currently provided under the Kaiser Small Group HMO plan, which provides for up to 20 covered acupuncture visits per year.

In addition, a “Non-discrimination in Health Care” clause has been written where it prohibits health plans ( such as Blue Shield of California and Aetna PPO plans), from discriminating against providers who are providing services within their state-defined scope of practice. Or simply put, these insurance companies, will no longer be able to say “yes your patient has acupuncture benefits, but only if performed by an MD or DO,” whom often have taken only 250 or so hours of acupuncture training. 

More recently, I've noticed that our Blue Shield Plan that we are slated to move over too has indeed included acupuncture benefits.