If you can’t afford to offer real medical care, why not offer fake medicine? The U.S. Medicare system is about to give this strategy a try, for treating back pain.
Last week, Medicare announced that it wants to start paying for studies of acupuncture as a treatment for low back pain, as reported by the Washington Post and Stat. The government’s reason, according to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, was that we need this option to help solve opioid addiction:
