This isn’t the first time acupuncture’s status as a covered service within Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid health care program, has been threatened; in fact, from 2009-2016 Medi-Cal recipients did not have access to acupuncture services.1 Since then, the profession has faced a perpetual battle to preserve its role within Medi-Cal – and been successful in defeating efforts to remove it.
The latest example: The California Assembly and Senate agreed to keep acupuncture as a covered Medi-Cal benefit,2 despite Gov. Newsom proposing it be removed as part of a 2024-25 budget revision. Acupuncture faced a similar battle last fall when Gov. Newsom proposed the original 2024-25 budget.3
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, emphasized acupuncture’s value in announcing the decision not to remove it from Medi-Cal:2
“Acupuncture is a critical health care tool to manage chronic pain and for other health needs. ... The state faces serious budget challenges this year, but acupuncture treatments can save us money in the long run by preventing those with chronic pain from switching to dangerously addictive opioids. I’m extremely grateful to leaders in the acupuncture community for fighting for the community and working with me on this important need.”
With no catastrophic reversal occurring before Gov. Newsom signed the final budget, California acupuncturists participating in the state’s Medi-Cal program can breathe their latest collective sigh of relief – as can Medi-Cal patients who benefit from the valuable care they receive.
References
Fertility acupuncture sometimes gets presented as a narrow protocol: a handful of reproductive points applied uniformly across patients. What this case reinforced for me: The most powerful work happens when we read the whole picture. The hormone data, the constitutional tendency, the sleep, the digestion, and the menstrual pattern, so we can treat the environment the ovaries live inside.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) affects more than 15% of the U.S. population but evades most practitioners’ radar. Just five years ago, it wasn’t even on my radar, despite already having 20 years of experience as a clinician at that time. The more I dug (similar to leaky gut and post-COVID syndrome), the more I found my patients were suffering from this disorder.
The motivation behind our practice of medicine is important, impacting not just our experience but also the experiences of those we treat. It is perhaps for this reason that the aspiration to help not just some, but all beings heal, has historically been an important part of the medical tradition. To explain this, we need to consider how medicine is interwoven with other social domains.