Newsletters > Winter 2000 > Write, Call now for Health Freedom Legislation

Help pack first hearing: February 7, 10:00 am, State Office Building, Basement Hearing Room

There is a Minnesota law that states “...a person that offers or undertakes to prevent or to diagnose, correct, or treat in any manner or by any means, methods, devices, instrumentalities, any disease, illness, pain, wound, fracture, infirmity, deformity or defect of any person is practicing medicine” and must be licensed as a medical doctor to do so or is practicing medicine without a license. This statute puts many natural health practitioners at risk of being prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license.

The new legislative session begins February 1. Your letters and phone calls are crucial to the passage of the bill to assure our access to safe, alternative health care. Its time to stop the unwarranted prosecutions of our alternative practitioners. Special interests are working hard to kill this bill, so please help us. Support your freedom of access to alternative health care by writing to your legislators – now!

THE PROBLEM FOR THE UNLICENSED is that under present law, unlicensed health care practitioners, including most homeopaths, herbalists and bodyworkers for example, can be charged with “practicing medicine without a license” and shut down. State prosecutors need not prove harm to the client; all the prosecutors need to do is to show that the practitioner has undertaken to “prevent or to diagnose, correct of treat in any manner or by any means, methods, ...any disease, illness, pain, wound, or defect of any person...” because that is defined as the practice of medicine.

OUR REFORM BILL provides rules under which unlicensed practitioners may practice as long as they disclose such things as training and education, tell the client the common risks and side effects of a proposed treatment; and obtain the client’s informed consent. The state then may not bring charges against the practitioner unless there is proof of client harm and of imminent risk of harm to clients. Since most unlicensed practitioners engage in safe, non-invasive therapies, this bill should allow them a reasonable way to provide health care services and to succeed based on their merits.

THE LICENSED PRACTITIONERS such as holistic medical doctors, dentists or chiropractors can be punished by their state licensing board (the Medical Board, Dental Board, etc.) just for being “outside of the standard of care.” The “standard of care” prosecutions can be a device the board uses to suppress safe therapies which have merit; in a “standard of care” prosecution the board does not need to prove that the treatment is harmful or has no scientific merit. It only needs to prove that the treatment is different from what is usually practiced in that health profession. And, of course, alternative therapies are, by definition, different. Innovative healers may be on the cutting edge of change, but powerful licensing boards dominated by special interests can easily crush their careers, depriving all of us of their services.

OUR BILL provides that the licensed practitioners who offer something different from the prevailing therapy may offer alternative therapies provided, again that disclosure requirements and patient informed consent requirements are met. The licensed practitioner’s licensing board then cannot bring charges against the practitioner unless it can show that the alternative treatment used is more harmful than the prevailing treatment.

Our bill, called the Complementary and Alternative Health Care Freedom of Access bill, provides a freedom of choice in health care matters that is consistent with the other basic freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion – that we so deeply cherish. Yet this bill sets limits on that freedom based on the state’s interest in protecting the consumer from harm, fraud and unethical conduct.

• Health care choices are among the most private and personal decisions we will ever make in our lives. We consumers deserve to have the same kind of freedom in health care choice and access that we enjoy in matters of speech and religious expression.
• Our alternative health practitioners deserve to enjoy as much freedom to practice as other areas of commerce enjoy. It is time to put an end to the unwarranted suppression of safe, alternative health care practices, both licensed and unlicensed. Our practitioners should not have to practice under a shadow of fear.

CONTACT BOTH YOUR STATE SENATOR AND STATE REPRESENTATIVE. This is easier than you may think! Just ask your senator to support SF-689; ask your state representative to support HF-537. Tell them in your own words why freedom of access to safe, alternative health care is important to you and your family. A short handwritten letter is fine. And a short phone message helps your voice be counted! For help in finding out your legislators’ names, addresses and phones, call the Chief Clerk of the House at 651-296-2314 during normal business hours.

Thank you for being a champion for health fairness and helping us end the fear.