Ahhhh, "skeptics." ICD codes are used for reimbursement and codification. Pure and simple. That the ICD is integrating "traditional" chinese modalities indicates that insurance companies are seeking to make inroads into China. This is the same as saying watercolor artists will be lobbying hard to make sure everyone describes everything in terms of tempera paint. "Skeptics" should be fucking celebrating this shit because what it does is give large health organizations an opportunity to codify, accept or reject traditional chinese medicine. ICD codes are taxonomy and this is nothing more than a taxonomy translation module. No one fuckin' says Premera has to cover "Bladder Meridian Problem." What it says is that when you have a shit-ton of data about hypertension without requiring an entire culture of doctors to learn your terminology. But sure. Be outraged. Be afraid. Have your fundamental understanding of the world threatened by an exploration of alternate terminology. After all, The ICD has been a staid and respectable body of terminology so far. By the bye: the opioid epidemic became visible only after individual healthcare practitioners undertook the Herculean labor of translating every country doctor's euphemism of "drug overdose" into something that could be parsed by vital statistics databases. By your argument, John Snow was a pseudoscientist.Well that’s a relief! Of course, you and I know that, once ICD-11 is adopted, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), such as naturopaths, acupuncturists, and the like, will be lobbying hard to make sure that this chapter is used.
