If you have private health insurance, you might well be helping to pay for other people’s snake oil.
In the face of overwhelming evidence that homeopathy doesn’t work, most Australian private health insurers continue to offer rebates on it – sending a clear message that this stuff is medicine rather than mystical.
The National Health and Medical Research Council has just released a report that proves once and for all that homeopathy doesn’t work. It did this by going through not just hundreds of studies about homeopathy’s efficacy, but also doing a metadata analysis of those hundreds of studies.
It found: No reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for treating health conditions.
In other words? It’s all a bunch of bogus mumbo jumbo. And when it comes to people’s health, their lives even, mumbo jumbo just isn’t on.
A quick refresher on complementary medicine here: Homeopathy is not the same as naturopathy or natural medicine. It’s a very specific subset of complementary medicine based on the principle that you can fix a problem by giving someone a super-diluted (sometimes so diluted there’s literally none of the active ingredient left) potion that contains something which also causes the symptom you’re experiencing.
In other words…
Now, if people want to use their own money to pay for their mystical woo-woo potions, that’s fine with me.
But letting people bill their private health insurers – who effectively distribute the cost of any given treatment amongst their members through fees – for something that doesn’t even work? So not okay. When your private health insurer covers a service, it’s not just individuals that pay for that service. It’s everyone.
So even if you believe in science, even if you believe this highly credible report by a highly credible organisation, you still have to pay for other people’s hogwash therapies. In Australia right now, most major private health insurance providers allow their customers to claim on homeopathic treatments.
But why are people turning to homeopaths in the first place?
For some, it comes from a basic misunderstanding, and therefore mistrust, of science. Given how frankly dodgy a lot of big chemical and pharmaceutical companies can be, it’s understandable that people are wary of them. But it’s not the science that’s to blame here; science isn’t nefarious dudes in lab coats putting patents on human genes for profit.
Science is a way of looking at the world that asks for evidence before accepting facts. Science is constantly questioning and evolving, constantly asking for more evidence – and anything that can be proved over and over again will be accepted. Science doesn’t stand for ‘truthiness’, it stands for effectiveness, and when something is proven to be effective it is allowed into the scientific cannon.
Here, I’ll let Dr Branowski explain:
People often use the fact that doctors once thought smoking was healthy as an indictment of the medical system – but a history of changing wisdom actually proves that conventional medicine is trustworthy. When the evidence showed that smoking wasn’t healthy, instead of sticking to what they were already doing, doctors changed their tune. That’s how it should be. Medical practice should change when new evidence comes to light.
But there is another thing that makes the bogus world of homeopathy not only appealing but actually very relatable. Unlike a lot of GPs, homeopaths actually take the time to get to know their patients, talk to them, and establish a relationship. Their consultations last an hour, not ten minutes. There’s a huge value in the personal touch, even if there’s no value in the treatments a homeopath is peddling.
Unfortunately, that personal touch is largely missing from many people’s interactions with their general practitioners. This creates a big problem because it means that people aren’t working closely with their GPs to improve their overall wellness. The way conventional medicine works in Australia currently doesn’t focus nearly enough on preventative healthcare.
If people were able to spend more time establishing healthy practices with their doctors, they’d be less likely to turn to unproven sources like homeopaths to provide solutions for their ailments, or improve their overall health.
Reconfiguring the way we relate to our healthcare practitioners is an expensive and complicated process. But if we can get it right – and cut snake oil merchants off at the head as we do so – it’s absolutely worth it.
If you’re not happy about paying for homeopathy, check to see if your health insurance provider covers it, and if they do, send them an email and let them know how you feel. And tell us what you think too, in the comments below!
