Before year’s end, Californians may no longer pay extra insurance premiums for acupuncture if a bill currently in the state Senate is made into law.
The bill, AB54, mandates insurance companies to include acupuncture treatments in coverage plans. It passed the state Assembly last month in a development that reflects traditional Chinese medicine’s steady progress toward institutional legitimacy, supporters say.
Authored by Democratic Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally from Los Angeles, AB54 passed the Assembly floor by a vote of 46 to 27 after a year of political wrangling. The bill had been defeated a year prior in its first incarnation.
Because the bill failed once, it now has a narrow three-month window, from March until June, to move through the Senate legislature and ultimately land on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk. If it fails again in Senate, the entire legislative process would have to restart.
Oriental medicine physicians say that passage of AB54 would represent one of the final major milestones before “discriminatory” policies by employers and insurers against oriental medicine are removed, and their practice gains its rightful parity with other alternative medicines.
Insurance interests, meanwhile, naturally oppose any mandates. The Western medical establishment, on public allegations of medical inefficacy, has also historically opposed the advancement of alternative medical fields, such as chiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine — and at one time in distant history, dentistry.
Dr. Daren Chen, 73, is one of the most respected oriental medicine physicians in the Bay Area and one of its most vocal and active leaders. Hearing that AB54 left the Assembly late last month, Chen immediately sent a letter to the Senate Health Committee, writing he was “proud to add my name as an enthusiastic supporter” and urged the committee to review the bill.
San Francisco Assemblywoman Fiona Ma has fully backed AB54 in an e-mail to AsianWeek: “The bill received bipartisan support in Assembly Health Committee and made its way to the Senate. I am hopeful that it will continue to make its way through the legislative process.”
The bill’s future in the Senate is clouded. The bipartisan support Ma spoke of was unconvincing—the bill’s first defeat notwithstanding, the current bill is meager in content and far from finished. Threadbare legislation often pass one house, as authors coax unsatisfied lawmakers by promising that they will flesh it out before it is reviewed by the other body.
“The Assembly tends to lean toward us, but the Senate side is more conservative,” Chen said.
If AB54 does not leave the Senate before the summer recess in mid-July, all efforts will have been for naught as the Legislature leaves for summer recess.
Because the bill originated from the Assembly and is not classified as urgent, it might not get reviewed until May or even June, according to Health Committee Chairman Sen. Sheila Kuehl, who declined to comment on specific legislation before an analysis is published.
Which is another hurdle: Before they become law, bills containing insurance mandates must be analyzed by independent parties, which takes at least 60 days. The analysis has not yet begun.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to say [AB54 will] face more resistance in the Senate, but I certainly think it’ll get a lot more scrutiny,” Kuehl said. “It’s pretty bare bones at the moment.”