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goes before the Commissioner’s Advisory Committee on Health Care and Insurance Wednesday morning to argue that Nevada chiropractors should get the same insurance reimbursement rate as other doctors, and the law is on their side. Dr. Jaeger is speaking in his capacity as an individual licensed chiropractic physician in the state of Nevada.
Currently, chiropractors get a much lower reimbursement rate from health insurance companies, even though both, federal and Nevada state laws specifically state that chiropractors are supposed to get the same rate as medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, podiatrists, and dentists. Subsection 2706a of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) specifically prohibits this type of discrimination. Similar Nevada state laws, NRS 689a.049 and 689Bb.039, already exist but are not enforced.
“The Nevada Chiropractic Council and the state’s Department of Insurance have reviewed the ACA language, and we have found that Nevada, which is frequently ahead of the curve, has had appropriate language in its state regulations since 1981,” says Jaeger.
More specifically, state laws say that coverage for treatments by a chiropractor must not be limited relative to coverage by any other type of physician. The state laws further state that reimbursements for the number of visits that a chiropractor’s patients may have per year should not be less than for any other type of physician.
Other states, including Oregon, have taken the language from ACA 2706a. Oregon even strengthened the language before adding it to its state regulation ( H2468).
In Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval’s State of the State speech on Tuesday, January 17, 2017, he declared that Nevada is in the middle of a tragic opioid addiction epidemic that causes the death of one Nevadan per day. Sandoval has previously made the same assertion and has vowed to fight the battle against the opioid crisis with conservative healthcare interventions such as chiropractic, acupuncture and counseling.
Jaeger will make his comments at a public meeting with the Commissioner’s Advisory Committee on Health Care and Insurance on Wednesday, January 18, 2017, at 9:00 AM in Carson City. The Carson City meeting will be held at the Nevada Division of Insurance at 1818 East College Parkway in the hearing room in suite 103. The meeting will be simultaneously broadcast in Las Vegas at the Bradley Building at 2501 East Sahara Avenue in the Division of Insurance Conference Room on the third floor.
For more information, please contact the Nevada Chiropractic Council, info@nevadachiropractic.org, (702) 518-2188, and Cover My Care, a project of the integrative health policy consortium, at www.covermycare.org, (202) 505.4472.
