The five all-important numbers I'm talking about make up your zip code, and those five digits are of critical relevance to our professional future right now. The zip code for your home is the key to finding the name and address for your elected officials. You may have a different zip code for your office, but for the purpose of helping to educate your officials about acupuncture and traditional medicine, particularly now that the Acupuncture for Our Seniors Act (H.R. 4803) has been introduced (see feature story in this issue), we're going to use the zip code for your home address.
It's important to find out the name, address, phone number and email of your elected officials: your U.S. senators and representatives, as well as your state legislators.
Many acupuncturists across the U.S. (much like many people in general around the country, unfortunately) don't seem to show much interest in their elected officials, even their state officials. That's a shame.
In reality, your state officials are the ones who decide what you can and cannot do in your practice. They create the laws and regulations in each state. The federal senators and representatives decide the national issues, which means they impact the practice of acupuncture overall.
In the current environment, it means Congress will decide the fate of the new Medicare bill: HR 4803; and whether acupuncturists will be recognized within Medicare and be able to treat (and be paid for treating) Medicare patients. It all starts in the U.S. House of Representatives, where the legislation has been introduced.
Whether you want to work with Medicare or you don't, H.R. 4803 is an important piece of legislation for the senior citizens of America and our profession overall. If passed, the bill will help give seniors and individuals with disabilities a choice in their health care that includes acupuncture; and help give our profession another victory in the fight for inclusion, recognition and opportunity within the health care system.
As an acupuncturist, you have one zip code (unless you own multiple homes in multiple locations, of course; but for the purpose of our conversation, we're talking about your primary residence). Now think about the United States overall. There are 41,702 zip codes in the U.S. What would the congressional impact be if only one acupuncturist from every zip code reached out to their state and federal leaders? Now imagine if every acupuncturist (and every acupuncture patient, for that matter) from every zip code did the same?
A congressional representative may have more than one ZIP code in their district. For example, the state of Alaska only has one zip code and only one current member of the House of Representatives. How many acupuncturists are there in Alaska? Think about how impactful it could be if the majority each sent a message to this single representative.
Finding Your Representative
So, how do you discover the identity of your congressional representative - the member of the U.S. House of Representatives who could help decide the fate of H.R. 4803? It's really quite simple. Here's a straightforward process that should only consume a few minutes of your time and will be well worth the effort:
Editor's Note: If the bill is passed by the House, it will then go to the U.S. Senate; if that happens, you'll want to contact your U.S. Senate members as well. Finding and contacting your state legislators is never a bad idea, either. Look for directives on how and when to do this from the ASA / NCCAOM leadership teams, which are coordinating advocacy efforts on an ongoing basis.
This is how we start a grassroots movement that gets this legislation, and future pro-acupuncture legislation, passed by Congress. Knowledge is power. (As of press time, the NCCAOM and the ASA are working on bullet points to help us begin to educate our federal representatives about acupuncture and traditional medicine.)
This process may seem like a lot of work, but it takes less than five minutes. Yes, one person can make a difference; will you be that person? It all starts with your zip code.
Passing the Medicare bill to add acupuncturists to the list of Medicare payees can help one-fourth of the American population (60 million Medicare beneficiaries) have access to our profession and the medicine we provide. Let's work together to help Congress recognize and support acupuncture and traditional medicine in America.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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