Take Action To Oppose New Holistic Healthcare Licensing Bills And Support Safe Harbor Holistic Practitioner Protection
Who is clamoring for protection or making claims against these practitioners? No one! It’s about the money.
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The legislative process rolls on relentlessly year after year, and the same shelved bills can be submitted over and over to wear down opposition. Citizens must also be relentless to protect their rights — or lose them.
As we enter the new 2023-2024 legislative session, Baystate users of complementary and alternative medicine are again faced with both challenges and opportunities to protect our access to a prime Massachusetts asset — one of the largest and most developed networks of affordable holistic healthcare practitioners in the country.
Many of the holistic health practitioners we rely on for essential care in this state are accessible and affordable because they practice safely and effectively as unlicensed healing arts professionals, just as they have for generations, and the generations before them.
Challenge: Two New Holistic Practitioner Licensing Bills Introduced This Session
Two bills introduced to control and license holistic practitioners — including all energy practitioners and teachers of Reiki, qigong, Jin Shin Jyutsu, tai chi, meditation and scores more — would burden these safe, traditional healing art forms with unnecessary and restrictive standards.
Holistic practitioners would be required to be certified, and receive additional, standardized, fee-based education to become eligible for licensure (and the privilege of paying endless years of renewal fees.) This would force many healing practitioners who have been safely practicing for decades to close their doors, and for those remaining to raise their rates.
Who is clamoring for protection or making claims against these practitioners? No one! But bureaucrats and holistic practitioners seeking insurance reimbursements are clamoring for licensing. It’s not about protection for consumers; it’s about the money.
Licensing requires standardizing education, which trains people only in dominant styles and professions, thereby picking winners and losers, and destroying the truly amazing delicate ecosystem that holistic healthcare has become. Both bills are lose-lose propositions for consumers as well as practitioners of alternative and complementary medicine in Massachusetts.
Opportunity: Pass Safe Harbor Legislation for Holistic Practitioners This Session
We have an opportunity, instead, to pass a safe harbor bill, a means of providing legal protection for these unlicensed holistic practitioners so they can continue providing their essential services in the state just as they always have, giving consumers the widest choice of practitioners possible.
If passed, Massachusetts would join eleven other states in protecting the tens of thousands of dedicated complementary and alternative practitioners such as herbalists, homeopaths, traditional naturopaths, Ayurveda practitioners, energy healers, wellness consultants, and many others who provide the care we need.
PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW IN 2 SIMPLE STEPS!
1. SUPPORT SAFE HARBOR PROTECTING HOLISTIC PRACTITIONERS
HD953/SD1365, An Act providing for consumer access to and the right to practice complementary and alternative health care services
Take action now by contacting your State Representative and Senator (find them here), asking them to sign on as a co-sponsor of these bills, filed in the House by Rep. Brian W. Murray and in the Senate by Sen. Nick Collins. The more support the bill has early on, the easier it will be to get it scheduled for a hearing once committee assignments are announced. A simple email or phone call to your legislator is all you need to do.
2. OPPOSE HOLISTIC BODYWORK LICENSING BILLS
HD3807/SD2151 An Act regulating alternative healing therapies
HD3152 An Act relative to protecting the lineages of Asian bodywork therapies
Take action now by contacting your State Representative and Senator (find them here), and letting them know you oppose these two proposals that would limit consumer choice without justification. A simple email or phone call is all you need to do.
For more information contact healthfreedomma@gmail.com or visit https://hfama.org.
