A historic meeting between chiropractic and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) leadership took place on March 10th, 2026, in Washington, D.C., featuring representatives from chiropractic national organizations, professional associations and policy principals. The collective goal: advancing the role of chiropractic in improving the health of Americans. Meeting participants focused on long-standing issues that have affected the chiropractic profession for decades, including access to care, reimbursement parity, and ensuring DCs have an appropriate role in national health policy discussions.
| Digital ExclusiveTreating the Common Cold
When an MD is armed only with a prescription pad, the treatment regime for the common cold is fairly predictable. Consider how 1,439 patients in 2,144 medical encounters were treated for the common cold:
Antibiotics Prescription Only -- 32%
Symptomatic Medication Prescription Only -- 6%
Antibiotics and Symptomatic Medication -- 28%
Never Filled the Prescription -- 35%
While over one-third of the patients never bothered to get the antibiotic prescriptions filled, the 60 percent who did contributed to what the authors describe as a misuse of antibiotics by MDs, which, conservatively, is a $37.5 million annual expenditure in the U.S.
SOURCE: Mainous AG, Hueston WJ, Clark JR. Antibiotics and upper respiratory infection. J Fam Pract 1996; 42:357-361.