We Get Letters & E-Mail

Yes, I'll Take a Sheet of Chiropractic Stamps

Dear Editor,

In your Jan. 29 issue, Dr. Chester Wilk renewed the call for efforts to get the postal service to print a chiropractic stamp.

The article prompted me to do some research into how many stamps the postal service may have dedicated to medical doctors. If they had, it might be leverage for us to urge a modicum of "equal time."

As I suspected, there had been nearly a dozen medical stamps since 1947. In a letter to the chairman of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to the U.S. Postal Service, I pointed out the injustice of an "everything for them and nothing for us" situation. I cited a finding of the court in the Wilk trial to suggest to the postal service that they may be unwitting victims of the AMA conspiracy.

U.S. postage stamps dedicated to the medical profession:

Ronald Marsh, DC
Portsmouth, Rhode Island

Dear Editor,

I enjoyed reading your article, "Quebec Task Force: The Intrigue Continues," in the March 25, 1996 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic. Your courageous defense of the use of appropriate guidelines in the management of whiplash injured patients should not go unrecognized. If it were not for your series of articles on this critical aspect of our profession, misinformation might be sanctioned as valid.

It is interesting that such a potentially influential ruling from a reputable gathering of individuals would have been reached without the benefit of a more comprehensive literature review. It is unfortunate that you were the "sole dissenting voter" in the endorsement by the Physical Medicine Research Foundation (PMFR) of the management guidelines of the Quebec Task Force on Whiplash Monograph.

The conspicuous avoidance of a proper scientific approach during the Nov. 1995 meeting of the PMRF would seem to clearly allude to a cost containment agenda as you have so accurately observed. Such an agenda is certainly not consumer, or in this case, patient based, but rather more appropriately institutional or insurance industry influenced.

I applaud your continued efforts to expose inaccuracy in this arena and hope that your column will give both clinicians and attorneys much needed assistance in protecting patients' rights and in fighting against such statistical misuse.

James Davis, DC
Carlsbad, California

Dear Doctors,

In the 3-25-96 "Report of My Findings," it was stated:

"The good news is that the chiropractic profession has reached a new plateau. We are already hearing from DCs who tell us that they had more new patients the day after the documentary airing than they've ever had. This was a very important step for chiropractic. Now comes the follow up."

As a member of the Arkansas Chiropractic Association's public relations committee, and on behalf of our three year statewide PR campaign now being launched, I request any/all doctors who reported to "DC" of new patients secondary to seeing the centennial documentary to ascertain what prompted those patients to respond at that particular time. If those doctors would send me any insightful information, I intend to compile and share it with my committee and with the editor of "DC", Donald Petersen Jr. Responses need not be formal, typewritten, nor time consuming, but will be deeply appreciated.

David Carter, DC
P.O. Box 966
Siloam Springs, AR 72761
Fax: 501 524-8392

Dear Editor,

In the March 25 issue, you ran an article that applauded a decision by the Kansas attorney general who ruled that MDs cannot perform chiropractic adjustments or manipulations in that state. We've all heard the worriers talk of what is going to happen to chiropractic if and when physical therapists and others start manipulating their clients in their offices, thus cheating us out of our fee. (The same thing that motivates the MDs who undermine chiropractic in the public's eye.) And our position is that we do it the right way and nobody else can. I heartily agree.

But what about ourselves? Are we so clean and pure that we never step into someone else's field to supplement our incomes? I think not. Witness the full page ads that run in virtually all the journals and magazines (including "DC") for kits that can be ordered so that chiropractors can invade the domain of the podiatrists. Is that any different? I'm sure those who are fitting their patients with orthotics and are realizing income for their services would argue their point.

In reality they are not only invading territory already claimed, but are actually doing their patient a disservice by charging for a service that could better be performed by a professional whose specialty is feet.

As I see it, we have no room to cry foul.

Joseph Armfield, DC
Tustin, California

Dear Editor,

Regarding "We Get Letters," Feb. 26 issue, Managed Chiropractics claims to be the largest specialty PPO with 19 million health care lives. What does that make ChiroHealth America with over 50 million health care lives? You do the math.

Ronald Cataldo Jr.
VP, ChiroHealth America
Chiropractic Health Plan of Calif.