Newsom Proposes to Cut Acupuncture From Medi-Cal, Alarming Patients and Providers

In the face of a $12 billion state deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised budget plan has sparked a wave of backlash among acupuncture advocates across the state.

A coalition of San Francisco health care providers and patients gathered in Chinatown on Tuesday to slam Newsom’s exclusion of acupuncture from state-subsidized Medi-Cal services from the proposal, released earlier this month.

Michael Bozier, a San Francisco resident, said acupuncture is the only treatment that has relieved his debilitating and chronic pain from a car accident 40 years ago.

“As we look to vote to fund or defund acupuncture, remember … there is a face and a name to suffering,” Bozier said. “Help when the opportunity calls — save the acupuncture.”

Eliminating the benefit would result in an estimated saving of $5.4 million from the state’s general fund this year, and “$13.1 million ongoing,” according to the state’s revised Department of Health Care Services budget.

In a statement, Newsom’s staff attributed the cuts to tough choices the Trump administration has forced upon the state.

“Because of the $16 billion Trump Slump and higher-than-expected health care utilization, the state must take difficult but necessary steps to ensure fiscal stability and preserve the long-term viability of Medi-Cal for all Californians,” a spokesperson said by email.

Last year, Newsom also attempted to slash the traditional Chinese treatment from Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income residents.

But the AAPI legislative caucus, state Sen. Scott Wiener and other legislative leadership were able to restore acupuncture in the budget, said Kenneth Wilkerson, a spokesperson for North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community health center.

“Here we are again,” Wilkerson told KQED in an email, “trying to restore this critical benefit again this year.”

Of the 20,000 patient visits to NEMS since 2017, 90% “were funded by Medi-Cal,” state Assemblymember Matt Haney said at the protest.

If the cuts go through, those who won’t be able to afford it out of pocket “will be forced into much more expensive, sometimes addictive medications, and higher cost, riskier treatments,” Haney added.

At the press conference, retired acupuncturist Han Shulin carried a book of scrolls, bound by leather ties and filled with loose-leaf parchment that frayed at the corners.

The book bears ancient Chinese instructions for acupuncture treatment, Shulin said at the event, referring to the book as “a kind of acupuncture bible.”

“Our job is to inherit, to achieve acupunctures, to let acupunctions travel the world, to let them travel the whole family,” Shulin said, the book’s yellowed pages wrestling with light gusts of wind.

In a major study — in which Veterans Affairs Healthcare of Connecticut and Yale University researchers followed nearly 2 million veterans suffering from musculoskeletal disorders from 2005 to 2017 — researchers found that for over 270,000 veterans who used acupuncture services, opioid prescriptions “dropped significantly after these approaches were integrated.”

After these results, the VA widely adopted acupuncture as part of its holistic health model, “because it works and it reduces long-term costs,” Lin Yang, vice-president of the California Acupuncture Coalition, said at the event.

Speaking at the event, District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter recalled that a year earlier, his campaign trail led him to Chinatown’s Portsmouth Square, where the budget cut protest was located. He had asked a senior citizen what was most important to her, expecting her response to involve housing affordability or public safety.

But he said he was surprised when she responded: ‘Zom Gao,’ or acupuncture, in Mandarin.

“She grabbed my hand and showed [me] where she gets acupuncture,” Sauter said. “She said, ‘Zom-Gao.’ She said acupuncture is the most important thing to her.”