R.I. Chiropractic Society seeks broader insurance coverage

Dec. 02--PROVIDENCE -- The Chiropractic Society of Rhode Island has launched an online petition drive for expanded health insurance coverage for chiropractic care.

Though many Rhode Island insurance carriers offer coverage for chiropractic care, the number of covered visits is often limited to 12 per year and includes co-pays that are often as much or more than an office visit would cost without insurance, the society said in a statement. Rhode Island Medicaid offers no chiropractic coverage.

"In Rhode Island we're recognized as physicians .... So we're supposed to have the same rights and responsibilities as any medical [practitioners] in the state," Dr. Michael Gottfried, a chiropractor in Middletown and president of the Chiropractic Society of Rhode Island, said in an interview Thursday. "But we don't have the same recognition from insurance."

The online petition calls on Rhode Island's health commissioner "to enforce Rhode Island and federal law through the inclusion of chiropractic [coverage] in ALL Rhode Island insurance policies, eliminate arbitrary limitations on treatment, and stop the 'Phantom Benefits' where excessive co-pays are greater than the amount a patient would pay out-of-pocket."

The Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner (OHIC) said in an e-mail that officials have "met with representatives of the Chiropractic Society of Rhode Island on numerous occasions'' about insurers' 12-visit cap and specialist co-payments.

However, OHIC maintains that nothing in federal and state laws requires Rhode Island commercial health insurance plans "to eliminate visitation caps on chiropractic services or to mandate lower co-payments for chiropractic services as opposed to other specialist services."

OHIC has no regulatory authority over Medicaid coverage.

Twenty-seven states -- including Massachusetts and Maine -- offer chiropractic coverage for Medicaid recipients, according to a 2012 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Chiropractic Society of Rhode Island has about 70 members, Gottfried said, and about double that number practice in the state.

According to the state Health Department's online database, there are 245 chiropractors licensed in Rhode Island.

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