The Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) has been dragging its feet for a number of years on incorporating chiropractic within its medical centers. On Oct. 16, 2001, the 31-member House Veterans' Affairs Committee, chaired by Christopher Smith (R-NJ), acted. It approved, with only one dissenting vote, legislation (H.R. 2792) to mandate chiropractic benefits in the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), and placed it on the House calendar for consideration.
As we went to press, that was the front-page story. The hope was that the bill would come before the House within a few weeks, but nobody in chiropractic was counting on it, including us. With the turmoil of the aftermath of the September attacks, our feeling was the House had other agendas. Still, the thought crossed our minds that as the focus of the bill was on benefits to veterans, and our military forces and resources have been activated for a long commitment, the House might be favorably disposed to the bill.
Literally minutes before we shipped this issue to the printer, the word came. At 3:32 EST, the House passed the bill by voice vote. We were truly surprised, and immediately revised this article.
The chiropractic section of the bill is under Title II of the "Disabled Veterans Service Dog and Health Care Improvement Act of 2001." The original bill sought to expand the DVA's authority to provide guide dogs to blind veterans. The bill was expanded to include Title II (the chiropractic program) and Title III (a national commission on VA nursing).
The chiropractic section of the bill calls for:
A Senate companion bill must now be introduced and passed before it goes to a final vote in the House and the Senate.
The bill has gotten this far thanks to what ACA representatives called "an intensive and lengthy lobbying campaign spearheaded by the ACA," but also noted the great joint lobbying efforts of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC) and the International Chiropractors Association (ICA).
It is clear, however, that the chiropractic bill will be strongly opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), and the American Association of Family Physicians (AAFP). The APTA, in particular, has launched grassroots efforts against the chiropractic provisions of the bill.
When the House Veterans' Affairs Committee was considering the bill, the APTA, in a written statement, urged that "all provisions relating to chiropractic" be struck from the bill. The AOA addressed the primary care issue: "It is obvious that a chiropractor lacks the education and training necessary to provide the services expected of a primary care provider." Their arguments, however, did not sway the committee, nor the House.
An aggressive grassroots and lobbying campaign in support of this historic chiropractic legislation is now underway by the chiropractic associations.
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
On Feb. 1, 2024, two more legislators – John R. Carter (R-Texas) and Robert “Bob” Good (R-Va.) – co-sponsored the Chiropractic Medicare Coverage Modernization Act of 2023, bringing the co-sponsor total to 155, two more than the total achieved over the entire two-year congressional cycle in which identical legislation last appeared (2021-22).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
