Since this is getting a few notes I may as well attempt to head off one of the inevitable objections thatâll show up if this gets far enough.
âIf Chiropractic* doesnât work, why does insurance cover it?â
Well, itâs very simple you see, insurance hates paying for things, and chiropractors are cheap as fuck.
Letâs say you injure your back scrubbing a toilet or something. You go to a real doctor, a good doctor who doesnât blow you off. That doctor may tell you to take some Motrin and call them if it doesnât get better, but they also might prescribe you a stronger anti-inflammatory, or a muscle relaxer. Your insurance has to pay out for the visit and the medicine.
Letâs say they do that and two weeks later your back still hurts. Your doctor orders an MRI. Your insurance now has to pay for an MRI, which can be a couple thousand dollars, well more than the premium youâve paid this month, which means theyâve lost money on you.
So youâre lucky and the MRI comes back that youâre okay but you need physical therapy. Thatâs another couple grand that your insurance has to pay out.
But maybe you werenât lucky. Maybe the MRI comes back and you have a herniated disc. Youâre gonna need surgery and physical therapy, and now youâve not only cost them more than your premiums bring in in a year, youâve hit your annual maximum which means they have to pay everything from now on. They arenât happy.
So letâs start back at the beginning. You injure your back, you instead go to a chiropractor. The chiropractor doesnât have a decade of medical training, they have a certificate from a for-profit college that says theyâre a chiropractor. They charge your insurance for an office visit, crack your back a bit, and send you on your merry way.
You might feel better for a while, because the placebo effect is more powerful than you think. But even if you do feel better, thereâs still the chance that youâve got damage. You may still need physical therapy, you may still have a herniated disc.
But if you keep going back to that chiropractor, theyâre never gonna tell you that, and even if they do, itâll be after 2-3 sessions, so 6-8 weeks at a minimum, during which time youâre putting more wear and tear on that injury, and eventually, you have to go to a real doctor.
But hereâs where the magic happens. See, you injured your back in December. Now itâs February. Because your insurance put off sending you to a real doctor for two months, some actuary gets a big fat bonus for âreducing costsâ in quarter 4. Meanwhile, your real doctor orders an MRI that shows that the damage is, in fact, much worse than it probably was to begin with. And thereâs some evidence of injuries after the fact from the chiropractor. Oh, and by the way, thereâs a chance youâre gonna be in pain for the rest of your life even with surgery.
But hey, your insurance managed to post a profit in Q4.
* âChiropracticâ is the âofficialâ term for whatever the hell it is chiropractors do. I donât respect it enough to use it unless Iâm mocking someone whoâs defending it.
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