Here’s the short version, friends: your private health insurance will shortly no longer feature claimable naturopathic treatments, and the reason is because they don’t work.
That’s not just a snide slam against alternative medicine by a smug middle class science dude, to be clear. That’s the opinion of the Office of the National Health and Medical Research and the government’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Baggoley.
He was tasked with the job of assessing whether or not a swathe of alternative medical practices were clinically beneficial and therefore worthy of being subsidised by the government under the private insurance rebate.
And the answer was “nup”.
Now, before we get into a furious debate about how aromatherapy has absolutely fixed mum’s joint pain, let’s make clear that just because something makes us feel better doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually addressing a medical problem.
That’s because loads of things make us feel better.
Relaxing is a big one. Being massaged is hugely comforting (humans literally develop mental illness if they’re not touched enough: it’s got the creepy-as-hell name “skin hunger”, and it’s a real thing).
Heck, I can confirm that drinking a lot of gin does wonders for toothache, and that it also has zero therapeutic dental benefit the following morning.
Sure, but the dentist is all the way down the road…
And naturopathy has a lot of very comforting elements to it, especially compared with the alternative of seeing a harried, stressed out GP trying to get through a bunch of patients.
But here’s the thing about naturopathy: it’s more a faith tradition than a form of medicine, and when it’s subjected to the sorts of objective testing that medicine is subjected to, those benefits vanish. And that’s why the government have decided not to support it anymore.
That, and to save money. It’s the government, after all.
At best, it’s a placebo, which is fine. Symptom relief is obviously valuable.
But at worst alternative medicine can be actively harmful – not least because people often waste valuable time pursuing magical cures instead of going with absolutely-horrible-but-successful medical procedures like chemotherapy.
Indeed, Steve Jobs reportedly thought that he might have survived had he not spent time attacking his pancreatic cancer with juice and acupuncture instead of medicine and surgery.
Pictured: not medicine.
It’s also worth pointing out that this will disproportionately affect women, since females have historically sought out alternative medicine at a much higher rate than males. And before you conclude it’s because dames don’t do science, it’s for a really sensible and damning reason: medicine is notoriously terrible at treating female patients.
Drug trials are almost exclusively done in the US on young, college age men and there’s a growing body of evidence that drugs tested on men don’t work as well for women, especially painkillers. And that’s a huge problem because the male-dominated medical profession have historically not taken female pain seriously.
OK, Lori Petty, bad example.
So it’s hardly a surprise that women are more likely to go “well, I could go see the condescending dickhead who prescribes me drugs which don’t work, or I could go see someone who takes me seriously.”
Unfortunately that person is prescribing stuff which either hasn’t been clinically proven to work or has been clinically proven not to work, so it’s a lose-lose.
What’s the answer? Well, a better funded public health system which was more actively welcoming to women would be a great start.
In the meantime, you’ve got until April to get your wellness rebates in.