미국에서의 침술과 카이로프랙틱 건강보험 급여 현황

A Study on Current Status of Acupuncture and Chiropractic Health Insurance in the United States

Backgrounds : The market of Complementary Alternative Medicine(CAM) in the United State(U.S.) accounts for a large proportion of the global CAM market and has a high growth rate. The recent introduction of Obama Care has brought the change in the health insurance system for CAM, and we need to analyze it for its implication to Korean system. Objectives : The purpose of this study is to investigate the current status of acupuncture and chiropractic health insurance in the U.S., and to draw implications for expanding the health insurance coverage for Korean traditional medicine through the comparison between the U.S. and Korean health insurance systems. Methods : We examined the data through the literature search and from the websites of both U.S. government departments and related organizations for the health insurance policy. Based on the collected data, we analyzed its CAM health insurance system in Korea. Results : The acupuncture covered by public health insurance in the U.S. has a limit in the number of treatments and a range of applied diseases compared with Korea. In addition, the practice of acupuncture is not subdivided. However, the chiropractic in the U.S. which also has a limited number of coverage and only three categories of practices are similar to that of Korea. Conclusions : Although the use of CAM by public health insurance is not active in the U.S., but the organizations such as Veterans Health Administration in Vermont is already discussing the use of acupuncture to solve the problem of opioid overuse. Thus Korea also needs to discuss to promote the expansion of the insurance system for CAM.