As you probably know, the chiropractic profession is celebrating a tremendous victory with the passage of the chiropractic VA bill.

Although many individuals and groups were involved in its passage (and each will, no doubt, try to take full credit for the achievement), I am exceedingly proud of the role played by the World Chiropractic Alliance.

When this legislative battle began, there was a basic disagreement about what the chiropractic profession wanted from the bill.

Some D.C.s wanted chiropractic inclusion in the Veterans health system at any cost. They were willing to have the profession included as a secondary medical therapy restricted to treating neuromusculoskeletal conditions only, if it meant we could say that D.C.s were covered by the VA.

But others -- including the leaders and members of the World Chiropractic Alliance -- understood that price was too high to pay. Having chiropractors providing medical therapy was no solution since M.D.s could easily and rightly claim they were already performing those services and, therefore, D.C.s were redundant.

We'd already seen that the medical doctors, as well as physical therapists and osteopaths, were opposed to chiropractic inclusion. They even managed to get support from some veterans groups, who were convinced that chiropractic would raise overall health costs.

If chiropractors had been limited to treating neuromusculoskeletal conditions, how many veterans do you honestly think we would have gotten to help? Chances are, they would have been advised to see a medical doctor for their back pain or other problems, cutting D.C.s out of the loop.

Worse still, that same restrictive definition of chiropractic as a treatment for neuromusculoskeletal conditions would have been applied to other legislation. The AMA would finally have had its victory -- seeing chiropractic reduced to nothing more than a second-rate medical therapy that didn't add anything to the health care system.

Think of it this way. If the bill had said that, at minimum, chiropractors could provide treatment for lower back pain, would you have supported it? Even though it meant -- technically -- that the Veterans Affairs department could say it included chiropractic? Let's hope not!

Do you turn away patients just because they don't have lower back pain? Do you turn them away if they're not suffering from specific neuromusculoskeletal conditions? Or do you try to help everyone who comes to your office? Do you look for subluxations and correct them in all your patients?

Why, then, do our nation's veterans deserve any less from chiropractic?

They don't, and that's why the World Chiropractic Alliance refused to support the VA legislation when it dropped the specific reference to chiropractic's role in subluxation correction.

It's a good thing we held firm, since everyone else was quite willing to sign off on the bill despite the fact that it might have done more harm than good. We did it the first time the bill came up for a vote last year and were strongly criticized for our stand. Because of our effective lobbying efforts, the bill died and we were vehemently condemned as a "fringe group" working in tandem with the medical profession to keep chiropractic out of the VA!

Anyone having even the slightest familiarity with the WCA could see through such a ridiculous accusation.

The World Chiropractic Alliance is the ONLY group that tirelessly fights against mandatory vaccines, publishes an electronic newsletter highlighting the risks of various drugs and medical procedures, and distributes free of charge the book, "Under the Influence of Modern Medicine," which alerts health consumers to the dangers of bad medical practices. It's laughable that the WCA would be accused of working against chiropractic in concert with the AMA.

When the bill came up the last time, we were back in Washington, ready to resume the battle. We wanted chiropractic to be part of the VA system -- but not if it meant chiropractors would be participating as token medical assistants. If we were going in, we were going in as doctors of chiropractic who would correct subluxations without referral by an M.D.

It's important to understand that the WCA never lobbied for exclusion of the reference to neuromusculoskeletal conditions. That's not how we view chiropractic, but our goal was to make the bill as inclusive as possible. If some doctors want to limit their scope to those medical conditions, we won't stop them. Yet, we wanted to make sure the chiropractic scope as defined in the bill protected subluxation-based doctors and safeguarded the unique character of chiropractic.

The WCA was so steadfast in its position that we even refused to support the bill when it was suggested that the subluxation language be

included only in the report language, non-binding staff comments that helps explains the law but isn't part of it.

Such report language is routinely ignored and was, in a way, merely a bone being tossed out to quiet the chiropractic dogs. So, we stood firm. Either the subluxation language was in the actual bill, or we would not support it.

Yes, we knew it was possible that the Congress would once again let the bill die rather than approve it with the subluxation language. But our lobbyist had worked hard to educate the legislators and we felt confident that, once they understood what a subluxation was and how it could affect health, they would vote for the bill.

We were right. The bill passed BOTH houses of Congress WITH the subluxation language intact. Once the President signs the bill, chiropractic will officially be part of the Veterans Affairs health care system, and chiropractors will have the unique role of correcting subluxations -- something no M.D., D.O., or P.T. can do.