The discussion of an ICA and ACA merger has raised some serious concerns among many members of the ICA about the future of that organization. While many in the straight movement are watching the situation with distant curiosity, the entire issue raises questions of importance to us. Merger did not happen overnight. It began many years ago with the two organizations working together on issues of mutual concern. It then progressed to other common interests like the accrediting agency and AMA lawsuit. In not too long a time, it became a viable option to a significant number of the membership to merge.
The question arises as to whether this possibility is remote with regard to the straight movement. It would seem as if the ICA is an historical example, it is not. At the recent FSCO conference in Chicago a member of the FSCO Board of Directors pointed to the success of an organization bringing together mixers and straights. He said “In our state group…we specifically decided not to work for straight bills or mixer bills. We work for chiropractic bills….” That attitude is a little frightening to some people.
Perhaps we need to step back and look closely at our objectives. The mixer objective is the treatment of disease. The means or technique for accomplishing that objective may vary from adjustment by hand only to drugs and surgery. But the objective is the same. The straight objective is different-the correction of vertebral subluxation to allow the innate intelligence of the body to better express itself. With that difference pray tell what can we work together on? In reality, there are no “straight bills, mixer bills, or chiropractic bills.” There is only legislation which enhances the identity of straight chiropractic and works against the mixer identity and vice versa. We have no more in common with the mixer chiropractor than we do with the medical profession. There is no legislation, public relations program, or activity that is mutually beneficial to both. I am not saying we need to be at odds with the mixer but we also need to realize we cannot work with them and it would not be ethical for us to use them to foster our own objective. It has been suggested that the straights in Arizona are doing that very thing (DC-Jan. issue). Historically, the mixers have done that to the straights over the years (formation of ACA by merging the UCA and NCA to name one, the approval of CCE and the demise of the ACC to name another). But their lack of ethics does not justify our doing it. Nobody likes fighting and it should stop but working together is not the answer.
Some years ago an effort by well meaning straights to have insurance inclusion was undertaken with the help of the mixers. It was supposedly “chiropractic legislation” not straight or mixer. Yet straights were already as busy as could be seeing as many patients as they wanted to and providing the care for every person “regardless of ability to pay.” Fifteen years later this so-called non-straight or mixing legislation has appeared to benefit only mixing chiropractic. The lure of insurance dollars has enticed straights into mixing and enabled mixers who would have never survived in practice to be successful financially. So much for “chiropractic legislation.”
The straight movement is in a better position than it has been in many years. It is time for us to move ahead with our objectives. It is time for us to be gracious and friendly toward the mixer chiropractor but we must realize that we are heading in two separate directions. There is no common ground when you are moving in different directions only greater distance between you. We cannot afford at this time to expend the effort, energy, time, or money to work toward common goals with the mixers, simply because there are none. Our direction for chiropractic is based on truth and principle. Their direction is based upon medical acceptance at the expense of that principle. Time and time again we naive, loving, trusting chiropractors have believed that despite our different objectives we could work together. Every time we have come out the worse for it. Any attempts whether on a state, local, or national level to work with the mixers can only meet with the same fate and destroy the great strides we have made in the last five years. v5n4
