Money Honey

Many lifetimes ago, I lived as a squatter-ex- patriot on Flower Island in remote British Columbia. A friend of mine named A (pronounced "eh!"), a Canadian immigrant with a real sense of humor, befriended me and taught me a few things about czars, dictators, secret police, corrupt societies, and the wisdom of blending in with the crowd. He had escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1968 before Russian tanks rolled into Prague.

A was a bard, gypsy, hobo, chess fanatic, clown, comic, Tai Chi practitioner, vegetarian gardener of remote sea bluffs. A taught me that living simply, with dignity, joy, and integrity, had not much to do with money, which was a good thing, because both of us rarely had any.

The high and mighty of the world eventually have to answer for their largess. This is evident in history, and written in all great spiritual traditions - Christianity (as you sow, so shall your reap); Buddhism (karma); Taoism (the high are brought low); Native American (man is but a part of the earth); and probably many others.

So it is best to be humble, like water, and occupy a low status outwardly, while enjoying immortal status inwardly. I'd rather be free than merely wealthy anyday, especially on the day I die which is fast approaching.

The medical exclusionary system in America, recently exposed by Michael Moore's new movie, "Sicko", is clearly doomed to collapse, especially when one juxtaposes its short ascendancy to power against the perennial wisdom traditions of the world. Those practitioners who cling to the big money game that all but rejects the Hippocratic Oath in practice (Do no harm) are destined for an unpleasant awakening as the unsinkable ship slips beneath the water.

Isn't refusal to treat someone based upon their inability to pay a kind of harm? I invite you to meditate on this point carefully: We don't own the medical knowledge that we've inherited. It was given to us out of kindness and the intention to eliminate suffering in the world. The lineage of acupuncture teachers stretching back 3,000 or so years are the primary cause in our possessing this knowledge. The tuition we paid is merely a minor secondary factor in a much larger universe of cause and effect.

So what do we say to the person who comes in for treatment, aching all over and mentally depressed, then, following the treatment, says, "wow, I feel like a new person". I told her, "It would really be good if you could come every week for a while." She replied: "Fifteen dollars is a lot of money for me."

There is no easy formulaic answer here that anyone can give you. This is something each one of us can choose to grapple with - or not. My point is, we have an amazing gift at our disposal - Chinese medicine - which is able to effect radical healing in living beings. How much money do we really need to make a decent living?

I graduated from the Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NIAOM) in 1997. Sometime towards the end of my graduate studies, I remember seeing lots of black suited people carrying brief cases filing into our classrooms on many an occasion. Unbeknownst to me at the time, ground breaking negotiations were happening between the acupuncture profession and the insurance industry.

From what I heard, a naive bunch of wild eyed healers were thoroughly duped into signing away our profession so that we (the acupuncturists of Washington state) would all have the privilege and honor of being deckhands on the Titanic (managed care/profit centered medicine). You can probably guess who the officers and first class passengers are.

I had only recently returned from my Flower Island sojourn before entering acupuncture school and the intensity of the academics did not afford me much time to reflect on the gathering storm clouds in the acupuncture profession. I had my sights on graduation and the oft repeated promises of making a decent living.

For years I had lived in unheated shacks without power or running water and shopped for my clothes and shoes at the Salvation Army. Once, on a bus ride from coast to coast, I stopped in a bakery in Montana and asked if they had any day olds they could spare. In Denver, I stood on a street corner and asked people for spare change. But the desperation borne of financial poverty was never a compelling reality for me. The experiences of my late twenties were merely the vicarious adventures of someone searching for meaning, but always with many life options no more than a phone call away. But perhaps I digress...

I was lucky to have a few mentors at NIAOM who I aspired to emulate. They gave me hope that one could be an acupuncturist and live with integrity. There were more than a few though, who seemed overly enamored with the imagined status of a budding profession with a few friends in high government offices. One senior western faculty member almost bragged about being in a profession which enabled one to buy a Jaguar. Ah, another sacred cow of our culture - the car. A bicycle works just fine for me most of the time.

I remember signing the NCCAOM statement of ethics in 1996. Such noble language to aspire to! I photocopied my signed copy and kept a copy in my files for many years, and...lo and behold, after a little searching this past week, I found it:

Article 4 under the subheading "Commitment to the Public": [b]"To make an effort to keep fees within the reach of the general public, and to have provision for flexibility in fees for low-income patients."[/b]

In any case, at some point in time, this paragraph got axed and it no longer appears in NCCAOM's Statement of Ethics. I wrote a letter to them several years ago and asked why the passage had been removed. I never received any answer. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I'll close for now by again remembering my friend A. He came to my shack one day and gifted me with a fresh poem, the green ink still drying on the page, which he proceeded to read aloud (as all poetry should be read): [b]"A Short Poem on American Philosophy: Money, Honey!"[/b][i][/i] I look forward to sharing again soon. May all beings be healthy and happy.:)

Jordan Van Voast, L.Ac.
[url=http://www.communichi.org]www.CommuniChi.org[/url]