I Don't Want Advanced Rights. I like Sweating Bills and Referring my Patients
POLITICS
By Roderic Lacy, MD DC
Expanded practice laws—what does that mean?
To the average Joe, it means more income, more responsibility, more ability, more fun, and more ideas. See, the problem is not the average Joe. It’s the average crazy one. You know the ones that hated ultrasound and galvanic current in the 70s. You know them. They are the ones that have testified against everything the average Joe has tried to do to add more rights to your law. I have seen how they squashed any attempt to advance our law over and over again and put to shame almost instantly any DC that stood up for advancement by screaming and pushing an oldout-dated pseudo-science philosophy that is so old it has dust. I remember in the 80s, there was a big movement to prove the Safety Pin Cycle was scientific.
We all got excited because now, with MRI and all the new electronics, we could prove pressure and dysfunction. It was a slam dunk. Proving the safety pin cycle failed miserably.
So what do you think? I can remember short-lived sparks of advancements all over the USA in the past to expand our profession with evidence-based facts. They continued to be defeated as fast as they appeared. It was easy for the crazies to extinguish each secular region of advancement because of the lack of organization and the staying-power each had. All those singular efforts were put in a graveyard that now holds so many historic good ideas and actions, all beaten to death with the hopes they will all be forgotten.
Guess what... the rock has been chipped away little by little and maybe to the tipping point, just maybe. Did you know that there are four states that have advanced rights? Some are broader than others, but all are advancing while the average crazy is freaking out and tugging their hair, trying to stop the advanced thinking DCs from destroying their profession.
What is with these people? Why is more education, coupled with more rights bad? Why is more education coupled with natural nutrition without the restriction of entry so wild and crazy? It’s not. It’s a lifesaver for the patient and our profession.
As we all so sadly know, there are ignorant, self-limiting wacko DCs that think a DC who treats patients by methods other than adjusting is bad. This is nuts and an embarrassment to each of us. A DC in Florida is licensed as a primary care physician, not just a chiropractor. So what are they really? Are they chiropractors or primary care physicians?
"Why is more education coupled with more rights bad?"
When I was a kid, DCs were real doctors with about the same availability of tools in their bags as an MD. DOs were still in the left field, although they were blasting towards real advancements incredibly fast. DO hospitals were popping up everywhere, and they were getting full rights in state after state. My MD had a steel syringe and a needle he would sterilize prior to using. Miracle drugs were the greatest thing ever, and the medical profession went wild and was advancing by the minute while chiropractors were still arguing about the safety pin cycle. Amazing: when I was in high school, exploratory surgery was the diagnostic means. If you think about time, medicine is not much ahead of us in many respects. They just got it together before us, and obviously, they have a much better law. We all share the same educations. It’s our leadership that distinguishes us from the others. It’s censorship within our profession that has made the difference. And because of the constant censorship, our leaders have used to hold us back, we have not only not advanced, but we have actually lost rights we had years ago.
When I graduated palmer in 1975, Alabama had just gotten a license, Mississippi was going to have its first Board meeting to award licenses and Louisiana had no license or thoughts of one yet. I had never thought about a state license prior to graduation. I had heard some rumors about the various state politics, straights vs. mixers, but as a very young student of 20 with one year of community college and being a new Palmer graduate, I never really gave it a thought. I was told that a DC is a doctor, and that sounded good to me. After I graduated, I went to FL almost immediately because I graduated in mid-December, and Florida looked pretty good compared to another winter in Davenport.
As I drove through Florida, I stopped in Gainesville and Ocala, and I visited a few old-timers that had been there for 40 or more years. They both enjoyed speaking with a new young graduate from Palmer. They both told me they were National Grads but were ok with me being from Palmer. They enjoyed talking about the direct competition there was between the schools years ago.
But what totally shocked me was what they both told me about their licenses. They each loved chiropractic, but their “drug license” did not hurt either and that the combination was amazing. As I said, I just got out of Palmer a couple of weeks earlier, and here I am talking with two old codgers that are telling me they have medical licenses and that they are chiropractors. Both had office/home combinations, and their signs both were hanging over the small front door reading, “Chiropractor.”
Full-drug licenses, right here in River City. That starts with “wow” and ends with “really?” I remember being so stunned that I did not know what to say. I remember asking for clarification, and again each told me again they have a full drug license.
It turned out that Florida law had a liberal Naturopathic law at that time that gave Naturopaths a full drug license. Here is the kicker, a DC student could get dual degrees, DC and NMD; yes, a DC degree and a naturopathic degree at some DC schools at the same time. Several chiropractic schools offered dual degrees back then. So it was normal for many DCs in Florida to have a full medical drug license then for those that chose to have both after completing a few additional classes prior to graduation as a DC. The last of the dual licensing ended about 20 years ago in FL, closing that chapter for good.
Dual licensing was put to an end rather sneakily years ago. The FL legislature tweaked the naturopathic law years ago from medical-political pressure. It changed the verbiage in their law to say that in order to qualify for a naturopathic license, you had to graduate from an FL school. And since there were no FL schools in existence and no ability to start one. The law finally ran out about 15 years ago when the last two DC NMDs passed away in Orlando.
Also, DCs had a full non-restrictive vitamin law until 1957 when the legislative body, in its great wisdom, but the word “oral” before the word “vitamin.” That was it. The gates slammed shut for anything other than oral nutrition, and the DC was shut out of complete nutrition. Chiropractors forgot they ever had real nutritional rights for years. With the passing of time, DCs were becoming spinal experts moving away from primary care and into the realm of specialists. You guessed it PI and insurance was the way of the land in the 70s and 80s; easy and lucrative DCs were on their game and making money hand over fist. Remember Mercedes’s 80s? Ahh, the Mercedes 80s. Yes, we were all PI specialists and courtroom testifying wizards. Cash was in the air, and it smelled good. As if things couldn’t get any better then Senator Dennis Jones, a DC, made a gallant effort to bring back the rights of the past, and he managed to get the word “oral” removed from the law which was to bring the law back to the way it was. Everyone loved it. We were going to be real doctors again. It was a perfect idea and effort by Senator Jones except for one small problem. The Federal Government got in the way. Going back to the past failed because, as time changed, so did the federal definition of what a drug is changed. The federal now calls any substance that is sterile a drug, and since FL DCs are restricted from” drugs,” sterile water and B12 are now illegal for a DC use or purchase. This is because Federal law is above state law. But check this out. The State of FL was sleeping and failed to realize the federal law change for a year and actually issued 350 Florida “Chiropractic Drug Licenses” before they realized vitamins were now drugs, and therefore their issued drug licenses are worthless.
Talk about a crazy thing. 800 DCs took the required classes and took the state exams, and 350 received from Florida an official lifetime chiropractic drug license. Wow. Talk about just stupid.
So what happened? Nothing. The whole thing was swept under the carpet. With time Florida forgot everything in their past again and went back to the same old stuff. The excitement of a real vitamin law faded when that crazy northern group entered FL politics in the late 80s. They aligned with the already known progress groups in FL. Dr. Jones’s gallant effort to advance our law was just forgotten, and FL politics moved toward the crazies, and since then, we have had one privilege after another taken away. The way things are going now, we will continue to lose one ability or one insurance code at a time until we fade away. And that is exactly what is happing. We are fading away, and we are in a real mess, and everyone knows it but won’t do a damn thing about it.
Ok, so what do we do to correct the problems we have? Better yet, before we figure out how to fix the problems, we have to identify what the issues are. Well, there are many problems, but one that stands out is the “little fact” that we are graduating doctors with excellent educations that can’t make a living. What a concept; put in tons of money and years and realize you should have done something else. Yes, this is not good. Have we educated our graduates out of a job? My Palmer education was minimal at best. I was right out of HS with no entrance requirements other than I could pay the tuition. There were no credited schools, and CCE was just a dream. As I mentioned, many states did not have licensure yet. It was perfect for me. I graduated just as DCs became spinal experts because the law said they were. PIP and workers’ comp had to pay, so the average office visit fee went from $5 to $85 overnight. The masses got wind of that, and the schools started to boom; new buildings, high tuitions, and lots of qualified applicants. The law said the DC was an expert, and we were accepted in PIP, private insurance, and workers’ comp. And they paid like clockwork for years; lots of years, enough years to attract high dollar paying students, The gravy train stopped, and things have certainly changed.
"Better yet before we figure out how to fix the problems we have to identify what the issues are."
Now things are almost like they were 40 years ago when a DC had a box on the wall for the patient to put their payment in as they left the office. Remember the old DE inside-outside stuff? That bogus philosophy sold easy those days. There is one significant change now that stands out compared to what the profession was when I was a kid. Now there is a DC on every corner. When I was a kid, we had one DC in my hometown in NJ. I bet there are 50 or more now. I paid $2,700 for my entire Palmer education. It’s sad. The new grads are up to their necks in debt and have little job opportunities. Many quit before starting in practice after graduation. And now the new graduate is on par with med graduates in education and debt and can’t find a job.
How long do you think this craziness can last? It won’t last long if it continues like it is. Intelligent changes must take place for our profession to survive. Our profession has flourished every time we had our rights increased. This is why it is so necessary to allow expanded rights. We need to inject new hope and life into our profession. We are not asking for anything new. We are asking for nothing more than we had before. We need to fight for the rights we had in the past. It is time for us to move forward by getting back what we had in the past so we can truly help the sick. There are so many conditions we could be helping naturally if we just allowed ourselves to do what is right and not continue to cower down to the demands of the crazy wild DCs that are holding us back and telling us what we must do.
Research is now showing that the viruses that are plaguing our society can be treated with injectable nutrition. I just read an article in the New York Post about Coronavirus, where the NY hospitals are treating the very sick with IV grams of vitamin C. We should be the ones leading that research and fight. Research is showing that vitamin C with chemotherapy multiplies the healing ability of chemotherapy. DCs should be leading that fight also. We should be the best profession there is. We have a lot to offer, but we keep allowing the crazies to tell us what we can and can’t do. I ask you why?
So before you say FL should not have a real vitamin law, you need to ask yourself why not?
Roderic A. Lacy, MD, DC, is a 1975 llr ijfflj graduate of Palmer College, Davenport, Iowa and a 1997 graduate of UNIREMI HOS University Medical School, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He * completed three years of neurosurgical residency at Dario Contreras Trauma Hospital, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He received his Dominican medical license in general medicine and is on staff at Dario. In 1997 Dr. Lacy was the founding father of the original FCPA which challenged the State of Florida ruling against injectable nutrition two times in court. He reincorporated the "NEW FCPA" in August 2011 and began accepting members at that time.
