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DENVER--You've just had a wonderful massage. You hand the therapist a special debit card that is run through a machine, and the massage is paid for by your insurance company.
Sound like a futuristic dream?
It's a reality in the Denver-Boulder area, thanks to MyChoice Holistic Medicine Alternative, a network of 70 holistic health-care providers offered by The Alliance of Denver.
Alternatives expand
The MyChoice Holistic Medicine Alternative includes massage therapists, registered dietitians, naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors and acupuncturists. The Alliance, a not-for-profit Colorado health-care purchasing cooperative, is owned by its employer members.
Why is the insurance industry becoming interested in covering holistic medicine? "Alternative medicine has exploded in growth," says Elisa Hamill, chief executive officer of The Alliance. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis reported that, since 1989, consumers have increased spending on alternative medicine by 69 percent.
In answer to the question of why alternative therapies have begun to migrate from the margins to the center of health care in the United States, an article in Life Magazine, September 1996, notes "One reason is that as allopathic medicine--a term commonly used to describe Western techniques--becomes better at what it can do well, its limitations become more conspicuous. "Allopathy is clearly superb at dealing with trauma and bacterial infections. It is far less successful with asthma, chronic...