3-26-03 1. LEGAL ARGUMENTS NOW AVAILABLE TO DOCTORS OF CHIROPRACTIC Last year, during a contested hearing before Judge Jones in our lawsuit against Trigon Blue Cross/Blue Shield, ACA attorney George McAndrews presented a brief that included citations from a number of medical publications that reaffirmed our position that chiropractic care is superior in the treatment of neuromusculoskeletal conditions. He quoted from numerous medical and government sources in making this point. Included in the brief were citations from the Annals of Internal Medicine, Rand, the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Duke University, the AHCPR guidelines, various workers' compensation studies and more. In response, Judge Jones commented that: (1) Interrogatory ten quotes from nine studies purporting to show that doctors of chiropractic are more effective and have more training than medical doctors in treating the musculoskeletal system. The interrogatory then asks Trigon, in light of these studies, to provide any studies or information that it relied upon in making its decision to pay doctors of chiropractic differently than medical doctors for the same services performed. (2) Interrogatory '9(b)' requires Trigon to disclose any study "and/or other information" supporting greater payments to medical doctors than to doctors of chiropractic. The answer to that interrogatory ought to supply the plaintiffs with any relevant information needed to prevent surprise in the preparation of the case for trial, particularly in conjunction with other discovery methods that the plaintiffs may utilize. Trigon failed to provide any contrary study. Instead it chose to rely on the greater expense of education for medical doctors over that spent by chiropractors to justify its discriminatory actions. Mr. McAndrews has put together many of the quotations from the publicly available literature into a single, 11x17 colored promotional piece that lays out the best argument for chiropractic care. He strongly urges that each doctor make hundreds or even thousands of colored copies of the document and circulate it far and wide to, for example: insurance carriers hospitals unions businesses golf courses community centers health clubs social clubs tennis and racquetball clubs bulletin boards legislators office handouts or mailers fold-ins for newspapers schools sports teams Olympic committees editors professional associations teachers nurses military personnel churches medical doctors editorial and column writers chambers of commerce. Ever the patriot, McAndrews even suggested that we should ask the Department of Defense for permission to drop them as leaflets over Baghdad. What better way to promote the positives of the profession than by quoting extremely reputable sources that aren't even chiropractic? Called the "Spokes of Chiropractic Progress," we urge that you take advantage of this opportunity to promote chiropractic. An introduction to the Spokes, as well as instructions on downloading the document, can be found on ACA's web site at: . How to download and print the document: Click on the link below to download this PDF file to your computer. Then save it to a disk and take it to your local copy center to have it printed out and copied. The reason this method is necessary is that the document is size 11x17, which most personal printers cannot handle.