September 2004

Chiropractic's shotgun wedding

by Terry A. Rondberg, DC., WCA President

The International Chiropractors Association was established in 1926 by Dr. BJ Palmer who served as ICA president until his death in 1961. Can you imagine what he would think about merging with the American Chiropractic Association?

Most chiropractors ‑‑ even those who don't belong to the ICA ‑‑ probably can't imagine a profession without the organization there to uphold B.J.'s legacy. It's a direct link to our roots, and a potent force in today's political climate.

Yet, there are those who, under the guise of wanting "unity," are still conniving and scheming to come up with a way to assimilate the organization into the ACA. One of their most common methods is disinformation.

In the July 2004 issue of "The American Journal of Clinical Chiropractic," Dr. Don Harrison makes public a conversation he had with someone he identified only as "a past president of the ACA." Dr. Harrison ‑‑ the ICA State Representative from Wyoming ‑‑ said that the ex‑ACA official was happy about the ICA's "forgive and forget" attitude concerning Life University's loss of accreditation and near closing. That was news to Harrison.

"I had just come from the ICA's Annual meeting in Washington DC," Dr. Harrison wrote, "during which the ICA Representative Assembly (members from each state) voted unanimously (including me) to look into ways of suing CCE over CCE's treatment of Life University."

The past ACA president really angered Dr. Harrison when he appeared to gloat that the ACA was satisfied now that it had gotten rid of Sid Williams.

"Imagine the audacity of the ACA and CCE/COA to believe what they did to Life U's accreditation is justified because they got rid of the one person that they felt was an irritant to them," he fumed.

Audacity isn't the word for it. Arrogance would be closer to the mark.

Audacity and arrogance are both in ample supply as the ACA continues to spread this kind of disinformation. They think if they repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.

So, they have their people go out and talk about how the ICA wants, as Dr. Harrison put it, to "kiss and make up." And, they repeat their mantra about how an ACA‑ICA merger is the only way to bring about unity.

Former ACA Chairman Dr. Jim Edwards was interviewed recently and again preached the ACA's version of "unity."

In the interview, he repeated the lie that the ACA and ICA are nearly identical on the key issues.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The two groups are not only very different, they oppose each other in many important areas, especially legislative goals. Here are just a few areas where they don't even come close:

***  The CCE ‑‑ The ACA supports the CCE (some would say "controls it") while the ICA and the Chiropractic Coalition are actively seeking ways to reform what has become a power‑hungry educational dictatorship.

***  Medical gatekeepers ‑‑ The ICA and WCA members were the ONLY ones on the VA Advisory Committee to argue in favor of direct access. The ACA members voted for a gatekeeper system.

***  Medicare reform ‑‑ The ACA opposed HR 2560, which would provide payment for x‑rays, exams, and instrumentation procedures for ALL chiropractors. The ICA supported this bill, along with the WCA and the Federation of Straight Chiropractors and Organizations. All we have to show for filing of the ACA Medicare suit is a policy that precludes wellness care and limits chiropractic to persons with "qualifying" neuromusculoskeletal disorders.

***  Trigon lawsuit ‑‑ The ACA insisted on continuing a lawsuit against Trigon, despite warnings that the attempt was doomed to be an expensive failure. The ICA and the Coalition pleaded with the ACA to stop the bleeding months ago. Now, the profession is millions of dollars poorer and saddled with a legal precedent that permits third party payers to discriminate against chiropractors.

***  VA Committee Nominations ‑‑ The ACA condemned the ICA's desire to nominate one of its leaders to serve on the VA Advisory Committee. It called the ICA (and WCA) liars for failing to rubber stamp its slate of nominees and even went so far, in a fit of pique, to announce that it would refuse to work jointly with other groups on legislative issues.

That's one of the biggest differences ‑‑ the willingness to work with other groups. The ICA leaders are able to get past personal and political disagreements and work with other groups for the betterment of the profession.

The ACA, on the other hand, has declared its "my way or no way" policy and refuses to even come to the table with any other organization.

The reason given by Dr. Edwards in the interview was that working together in harmony with other groups ‑‑ the way the Coalition does ‑‑ "becomes cumbersome ... Too many cooks and with that many leadership organizations, it becomes unworkable and that is not speculation that is how it has worked in the past."

Perhaps that's how it has worked in the past for the ACA, since it sees its role as that of a domineering parent. If someone questions its actions or policies, its answer tends to be akin to "because I said so, that's why."

But the Coalition has proven that organizations, working together as peers in a mutually respectful environment, is not only do‑able, but very effective. This year, the Coalition's Joint Legislative Day in Washington, DC, drew some 600 participants, who separately and together lobbied Congress.

Let's not fool ourselves ‑‑ and let's not let the ACA fool us. It doesn't want competition or opposition, and it surely doesn't want anyone to act as a watch dog and alert the profession that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

As one astute political observer likes to note, they want to ignore the FSCO, destroy the WCA, and absorb the ICA. They are doing this by spreading lies and rumors about how cozy the ACA is with the ICA and how disruptive the WCA is.

This isn't the first time the ACA has tried to force a shotgun wedding with the ICA. In 1989, the ACA staged a vigorous campaign for merger, using the same "unity" arguments as it does today.

Back then, the merger was defeated because ICA members knew that a wide gulf separated the philosophy of the groups. One of the most heated arguments at the time was over the question of drugs in chiropractic. The merger document ‑‑ known as "Draft Ten" ‑‑ was supposed to be the model for the new group, but the ACA deleted the word "drugless" from the preamble of the constitution.

Ronald L. Harris, DC, executive vice president of the ACA at the time, stated that the ACA House of Delegates removed the word because "...it could tie the hands of those chiropractors practicing in states which permit limited prescription of proprietary drugs..." The late Fred Barge, DC, then president of the ICA, countered: "I'm sure ICA members would say that a chiropractor's hands should be tied in respect to the use of drugs. ... ICA chiropractors certainly all agree, drug inclusion in chiropractic practice must be stopped now."

The two groups couldn't even agree on the words "subluxation" and "adjustment."

The ACA had just put an insert in Readers Digest magazine that was supposed to educate the public about chiropractic. Dr. Barge pointed to the fact that, in the insert, the ACA had "basically dropped (the word subluxation) from its verbiage." He said the ACA's explanation was that "the language has to be changed to conform with terminology prevailing among other health professionals..."

So, here we are, 15 years later and the ACA is still trying to shut the ICA up by assimilating it into a single, ACA‑dominated group. While they continue to try and convince DCs that they're doing it for "unity," it doesn't ring true now any more than in did back then.

As Edgar J. Mohn once said, "A lie has speed, but truth has endurance." So does the ICA and the values instilled in it by people like BJ Palmer and Fred Barge.

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