ICA's Gift to ACA: Not Opposing ACA Medicare Scope Expansion & Drug Bill
The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), despite being under increasing pressure from a growing number of its members over its acquiescence to the American Chiropractic Association and its agenda to move chiropractic into the allopathic model, has announced it will not support the ACA's Medicare Bill - neither will they OPPOSE it.
The announcement follows a meeting of the Chiropractic Summit group that included several representatives of the Chiropractic Cartel including the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners, the Council on Chiropractic Guidelines & Practice Parameters and the Association of Chiropractic Colleges. The President of Life Chiropractic College West - Ron Oberstein and Life University Board of Trustees Member - Tom Klapp were also in attendance.
The President of the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC) recently referred to chiropractors who manage vertebral subluxation as "the gangrenous arm of the profession that needs to be cut off" and not a word was said about it from any of the member schools of the ACC including LIFE, LIFE West, Palmer or Cleveland.
ICA members have been expressing their concerns about the direction of the ICA for some time now and the ICA has put pressure on those members to not speak out including barring members from their private Facebook Group and putting pressure on the Representative Assembly to keep in line.
The Georgia Chiropractic Association is a signatory to the ACA's Medicare reform plan that includes removing the vertebral subluxation mandate from the Medicare legislation and adding full scope reimbursement including drugs based on the state and chiropractic physician primary care status.
The move by the ICA and the Summit group to refrain from directly opposing the ACA is seen as a nod and a wink to the ACA that they can move ahead without the ICA and the members of the Chiropractic Summit interfering with their efforts.
The nod to the ACA is further evidenced by the fact that the ICA has no alternative Medicare Bill to promote - though it has been talking about one for many months and claims to have a draft. It refuses to show the draft to its members and instead refers to broad outlines it claims are based on consultation with the entire profession - as opposed to the membership of the ICA it is supposed to represent.
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In 2013 at the height of the Council on Chiropractic Education's fight to keep its recognition with the United States Department of Education the ICA engaged in talks with the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) regarding the CCE’s Governance structure and turned on the DaVinci group (which had opposed the CCE's recognition) and endorsed the CCE. Other familiar groups involved in the discussion included:
- The Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB)
- The National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE)
- The Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC)
- The Congress of Chiropractic State Associations (COCSA)
- The American Chiropractic Association (ACA)
Collectively this group has been referred to as the Roundtable and part of the Chiropractic Cartel operating within the chiropractic profession. It is part of a larger group known as the Chiropractic Summit. The Chiropractic Summit’s goals include establishing chiropractors as physicians and securing third party pay.
Then ICA representative to the Summit Steering Committee, Dr. Stephen P. Welsh, represented ICA at the Round Table where CCE is alleged to have made this deal.
Previously the ICA had been instrumental in the development of the DaVinci Group which formed following the 2011 hearing. DaVinci represented a larger faction of the chiropractic profession than the Summit group with over 70 organizations involved. However, the ICA controlled the deciding votes on DaVinci.
In one move after another the ICA has given in to the ACA, CCE and the rest of the Chiropractic Cartel and in each of these efforts Welsh, the current President of the ICA, has been at the center.
In the announcement by Welsh and the ICA regarding the recent ICA decision not to oppose the ACA's Medicare Bill, the ICA refers to "chiropractic physicians" repeatedly in both the announcement and the Powerpoint accompanying it that was presented to the Summit Group.
It has long been a goal of the ACA, CCE and the rest of the Cartel to embed "chiropractic physician" language in accreditation standards, regulatory law and health policy. The use of this term so easily slipped in by the ICA despite the fact that the term does not appear in any of the ICA's organizing documents or policy statements is a clear sign of support for those efforts and a misrepresentation of the ICA's values. The ICA will no doubt claim that chiropractors are already considered "physicians" under Medicare and that is why they used the term. However, "physician" could simply be replaced by "chiropractor" and "chiropractic services" in any Medicare overhaul if that was what they really wanted.
The use of "physician" however is a sore point in all of these debates since chiropractors who are dependent on third party pay believe that being able to call themselves a physician increases their scope, increases third party billings, and elevates them to a higher status than simply calling themselves a "chiropractor".
The acquiescence on this by the ICA and Welsh (despite it being at odds with ICA values) and the lack of any opposition to the Cartel's scope expansion Bill, is a major gift to them by the ICA. All the while ICA's President Welsh refers to these actions as his "Big Tent" strategy to quell ICA members concerns about the direction of the ICA and the abandoning of some of its core values.
This gift to the ACA also comes at a time when the ACA has been increasingly consolidating its power within the profession. Throughout the country the ACA and its members have infiltrated chiropractic state associations, regulatory boards and the Boards of Chiropractic Colleges (including Palmer) and have been pushing ACA Policies.
The "Big Tent" Welsh refers to actually belongs to the American Chiropractic Association and he appears to be begging for a place to squat.
