Manitoba is the only remaining Canadian province that covers a portion of chiropractic care for all residents, but a new funding formula effective June 1 cuts $4.8 million from Manitoba Health's annual subsidies for chiropractic, reduces the allowable number of visits to a DC from 12 to seven per year, and lowers the per-visit coverage amount from $12.30 to $8.29. (On April 1, 2018, coverage will increase to $10 per visit, but still significantly lower than previously.)
Note that this coverage amount is for the chiropractic adjustment only, according to the Manitoba Chiropractors Association (MCA), and "does not include other services such as the examination, re-examination, x-rays, consultation, general information on exercises or nutrition, or other therapies used to support the chiropractic adjustment."
In an article in the Canadian Chiropractor reporting on the cuts, Dr. Greg Stewart, a spokesperson for the MCA, emphasized the funding scale-back "flies in the face of the national opioid strategy. ... Although we have the provincial government signing on to the federal government's national opioid strategy about improving access to nonpharmacological care, at the same time within months of each other, they decrease access for the same nonpharmacological care. It's hard to understand."
Longtime readers of Dynamic Chiropractic will recall that Ontario delisted chiropractic as a partially covered service in 2004, and Alberta followed suit in 2009, leaving Manitoba as the sole Canadian province offering any measure of chiropractic coverage for all residents. One wonders whether the provincial government's next cost-saving step will be to remove chiropractic entirely from Manitoba Health. Stay tuned.
The chiropractic profession is under a sophisticated and relentless assault from corporate medicine, so strategically executed that most don’t even recognize it happening. The campaign is powerful, calculated, and well-funded, demonstrated by its covert tactics and the millions being invested to carry it out. Corporate medicine's endgame wants only two things from chiropractic: all our patients and all our money – and it is getting it.
Over the past two decades, more than 18 million spinal surgeries have been performed in the United States, and cervical disc replacements represent a fair share of those. Device recalls due to design flaws can place patients in difficult clinical situations, especially those who are symptomatic and reluctant to undergo revision surgery. This case highlights the role of chiropractors in managing complex postsurgical patients, particularly those with recalled spinal implants.
UnitedHealth Group, parent company of UnitedHealthcare, has announced sweeping changes to its prior-authorization (PA) requirements that will eliminate the requirement for chiropractic care and numerous other healthcare services by the end of 2026. Doctors of chiropractic, other providers and patients have long lamented prior authorization requirements because they can delay needed treatment, limit access and even cause some patients not to pursue care.
