One hundred and sixty nine people took the AOMSM Insurance Survey in November.  The 126 women and 43 men, with an average age of 46, were overwhelmingly in favor of expanding insurance coverage for acupuncture, both in Massachusetts (80%) and as part of the Federal Employees Benefits package and Medicare (81%).  40% of respondents take credit cards for payment in their offices and 42% offer a sliding fee scale.  The survey revealed some interesting things about current insurance practices.  87% of respondents estimated that, in the past year, less then 10% of their acupuncture treatments had been reimbursed by insurance.  75 people provide their clients with a bill for the client to be reimbursed by their insurance and most of them are "happy" or "very happy" with how that works.  

You can see a complete summary of the results from the AOMSM insurance survey at www.aomsm.org.   There is also a separate file of all the comments that people wrote in.  (Comments Click Here)

The Insurance Task Force is working on developing a plan of action.  The next step is to contact the people who identified they are interested in working on this issue.  We are also learning about the activities of the legislative committee of the national acupuncture organization, AAAOM, and their efforts to include acupuncture in the plans for health care reform being developed by the Obama administration.  With the resources available to us, should we focus on federal legislation which could supersede anything Massachusetts does, or concentrate on developing a local strategy?

If you would like to get involved on the insurance task force, please contact Ellen Highfield at eshighfield@comcast.net.