Originally published July 25 2005
Insurance companies may not cover treatment alternatives to pain pills that cause heart problems
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Although some pain medications have been linked to heart problems, alternatives to pills, like physical therapy or acupuncture, can be expensive treatments that many insurance companies won't cover.
''It is the pain," said Harrington, 36, whose life has been framed by an uncommon form of arthritis for a decade and a half.
She has tried pills and shots and then more pills and more shots.
She never much liked taking all that medication and she always worried about the harm, along with the good, those drugs might do.
Now her worries, she said, are greater than ever.
A stream of medical studies during the past eight months linked certain pain relievers with heart complications -- meaning that for Harrington and other patients facing the ricocheting drumbeat of pain, the world of pain relief has become an even more dangerous place.
They would think it's quackery," said Eve Kennedy-Spaien, clinical supervisor for outpatient pain services at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network in Medford.
''Now, people are really interested, and they want to get as much as they can."
But once a patient embraces an alternative approach, a very different kind of pain can attack -- in the wallet.
Even as such once-scorned treatments have achieved widespread acceptability in the high temples of traditional medicine, insurance plans have been slower to embrace -- and pay for -- those services.
When she went to see her rheumatologist, Dr. Robert Shmerling, she asked about getting his blessing for visits to an acupuncturist so she could avoid taking more pills.
''I don't want to put all those chemicals in my body," she said.
''Absolutely, acupuncture is an option I will offer folks," said Shmerling, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
He even wrote a letter to the insurer stating that, in his opinion, acupuncture was a medical necessity for treating Harrington's psoriatic arthritis, which tends to appear in younger adults.
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