Medicare Reimbursement for Acupuncture

The Hinchey bill, HR 818, would have Medicare pay for certain qualifying acupuncture services. Do you think it's a step in the right direction? As it is right now, most acupuncture services are like spa treatments for the upper socioeconomic strata. A few beneficent acupuncturists run low-overhead community clinics with semi-private treatment areas and a low, sliding-scale fee structure, not requiring proof of income but empowering patients to decide what they can afford, seeing a lot of working-class patients, and at an average of $20 per visit, patients can afford to come enough times for slow but sure acupuncture to resolve stubborn problems. I applaud this kind of effort, and hope it catches on everywhere. We really need a lot more community with each other, people. But Medicare reimbursement of acupuncture sounds like a great idea, with private insurance sure to follow. More people will get acupuncture and more practitioners will have more overhead, paperwork, and headaches. Heck, with enough reimbursed acupuncture treatments everybody might see we need national health care. One fear practitioners have is that having third-party payers will lead toward standardized treatment in an art where every treatment is supposed to be different for each patient. Readers, please let me know your opinions on the Hinchey bill.