Urges Chiropractors to Join the ACA

The New Mexico Board of Chiropractic recently lost their bid to expand the scope of practice to include controlled substances but the Past President of the New Mexico Board of Chiropractic and self proclaimed champion of the chiropractic drug pushers states this was a significant step forward in their quest.

Here is Dr. Doggett's letter to the Florida Chiropractic Physicians Association.

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New Mexico Update By William Doggett, DC, Past Board President

SB 471 was the primary bill this year and would have increased the level New Mexico chiropractors with AP certification prescriptive authority to include all pharmaceuticals in Schedules 3-5. It would have increased their education to include 500 hours of clinical rotation to train for the increased authority and practice rights.

The bill was tabled in the Public Affairs Committee. This is different from our last outing where the bill was voted down and represents a significant step forward in our quest toward passage.

The committee heard objection to the bill from the "usual suspects", the ICA and their sparse minions in the state. Chiropractors were again accused of being too dumb to be trained to prescribe safely and of trying to blur the difference between them and medical physicians. The committee was not fooled this time and put no credence in the ICA objections.

The move to table came with the invitation to bring the bill to the interim committee on health care to work out the details and fine tune the wording so that it was more easily understood by the Senators. Over all a very good result for this years hard work. Many of our FCPA colleagues called the committee members this year and added their names to the facebook petitions that were circulated and we deeply appreciate their participation and assistance in our efforts.

It was interesting and very telling that the ICA hired a lobbyist and brought in their president to oppose our prescription authority bill but failed to show up (either they or the lobbyist) at hearings regarding a bill that would have included chiropractic into the NM Medicaid program or another bill that would have lowered patient co-pay amounts for chiropractic care to the level of the PCP co-pay.

That the ICA and the other less evolved members of our profession would oppose a bill to advance the scope and then fail to support other bills that would increase chiropractic access, availability and affordability for our patients clearly demonstrates their position on the future of chiropractic. They seem to wish us die a stagnant and impotent profession while we clutch at the dogma of the 19th century.

Every member of the FCPA that is not also a member of the ACA strengthens the ICA and MCQI positions. I urge all FCPA members to join the ACA and help us take the profession into the future.

William Doggett DC
rodeodc@aol.com