saxitoxin wrote:3. Obama healthcare advisor and Pranic Healing advocate Joie Jones (whose own research was so outlandish that even CACM wouldn't fund it - he had to get a "research grant" from the Pranic Healing cult) also supports the so-called goals of rational, scientific inquiry of the Democrat Party. Here's "Grand Master" Steve Co - the head of the Pranic Healing cult - teaching a new group of pranic "doctors." For just $299 (lunch included) you can go to an 8-hour seminar at the Holiday Inn to learn how to cure cancer by waving your hands over someone. Have cancer of the tits? Under Obamacare, you can now go to this guy to get it cured. (seriously)
Acupuncture was once viewed with similar mindset. Going to a chiropractor was once something that insurance companies wouldn't fund, viewed very similarly.
Personally, I wouldn't choose to go to a faith healer, which this sounds like; but there are religions that would advocate this sort of thing. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses would prefer to have someone pray and wave arms over them than get a blood transfusion. So, under "religious freedom," this sort of care should be paid for to a degree. Plus, there's a percentage - small, to be sure, but it exists - of "miraculous cures" - people who suddenly no longer have the disease they had the week before, and "real doctors" cannot explain why they do not, because "real doctors" had no cure to offer them.
So, these patients undertook a form of "faith healing," and it worked for them.
How is this really so very different from a proposed HIV/AIDS pharmaceutical, an 'experimental drug,' that an insurance company might pay for, that turns out to work to a degree, for a very small percentage of the population.
Should faith healing, chiropractic, acupuncture, or experimental drugs replace all "traditional" healthcare? No, of course not. But as was pointed out, the percentage of money being sent "that way," is very small. Maybe it's just enough, though, to give "traditional western medicine" the warning that if they mess over, there IS some market competition out there.