Senator Who Takes Bee Pollen Backs Alternative Healthcare

A Broader Definition of Healthcare
Proposals before the Senate would allow treatment plans to incorporate alternative medicines, including acupuncture and dietary supplements. Insurers and some scientists object.
By Kim Geiger and Tom Hamburger, The Los Angeles Times, 12/6/2009

Reporting from Washington - Acupuncturists, dietary-supplement makers and other alternative health practitioners, some of whose treatments are considered unproven by the medical establishment, would be brought more squarely into the mainstream of American medicine under the health legislation now before the Senate.

The legislation would allow doctors to incorporate alternative health providers in some treatment plans. It also includes language that some believe could require insurance companies to expand their coverage for alternative therapies, on which Americans now spend $34 billion a year...

The leading champion of these measures is Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who credits bee-pollen pills with curing his seasonal allergies…