HB1173 DEFEATED IN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
Written by Administrator | 03 March 2011
Colorado Ayurvedic Medical Association participates in effort to change and ultimately, defeat HB1173, The Naturopathic Doctor Licensing act, which as drafted, posed a threat to the Ayurvedic Professions in Colorado.
Report by Varadaan
A broad coalition of people and organizations weighed in against the law. COLORAMA took a unique position, offering a position of neutrality IF the FAIR ACCESS amendment we drafted was attached to the original language. Our amendment shifted the bill from licensure with scope of practice more into a titling act. We chose to overlook the potential impact of allowing this ambitious group of people with whom we share scope of practice a beachhead into the statutory law of Colorado. That Olive Branch was rebuffed. At a rescheduled hearing, the bill proponents chose to strike out all of that original language and offer a modified version of the Curry bill which in 2009 made it through the House, but died in Senate Committee. They chose to make the new language available only at the moment the House Committee opened at its rescheduled time: 1:30pm on March 1, 2011. During testimony, Varadaan put on a blindfold in protest of the poor process. The new language did include a clear exemption clause inspired by work of COLORAMA, which was a strategy we pursued to put in a safety net in case the bill did happen to pass this year. But the bill did not escape initial committee hearing.
Perhaps the position of the Colorado Medical Society, which got to speak first, had the greatest impact, since the 4-year ND’s were unwilling to commit to keeping their language unchanged through the Senate, should the bill get out of committee, a key point CMS required in order to support the bill. We also had a great concern with this “compressed balloon”, since the critical exemption language contained in one stand-along paragraph that had been added since 2009 appeared, as if “pasted in” 12-37.3-114 (3). In the Democrat controlled Senate, more friendly to the bill sponsors, there is real concern that such a phrase could become “stripped out”. The result could then be a protected ND scope of practice and a Task Force charged with considering issues related to the practice and regulation of: a system of healthcare for prevention, naturopathic diagnosis, and naturopathic treatment of human related health conditions, injury, and disease; the promotion or restoration of health; and the support and stimulation of a patient's inherent self-healing processes, all of which is practiced through patient education and the use of naturopathic healing modalities and remedies. 'Naturopathic modalities' would be taken to mean the use of food, extracts of food, nutraceuticals, vitamins, amino acids, minerals, enzymes, botanicals and their extracts, homeopathy, all dietary supplements and injectable vitamin B-12.
