Should Health Insurance Pay for Prayers for Healing?

If the Los Angeles Times is to be believed, the Senate health reform bill requires insurers to consider covering prayer "treatments" as medical expenses. The provision was inserted by Senator Hatch from Utah, with support from my own two Senators - Kennedy and Kerry! The Christian Science Church, which has substantial wealth, is based in Massachusetts. This probably explains why two ordinarily thoughtful liberal Senators supported such an absurdity.

In my clinical practice I often encouraged patients to use prayer as part of their "management strategy" for handling their conditions. And when patients with serious ailments asked me to remember them in my prayers I said I would, even though I do not do petitionary prayer. (I generally interpreted the request to be about concern for their well being and commitment to them, which is why I felt comfortable saying "yes" to the request.) But when prayer for patients by others has been subjected to experimental study it has not been effective. Mandating ineffective treatments is exactly what legislatures should not do.

The article quotes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, as saying the provision raises serious questions about government support of religion: "I think when Congress mandates that health companies provide coverage for prayer, it has the effect of the government advancing religion." I disagree.

If prayer were shown to be effective in curing disease (and it hasn't been) it would seem just as reasonable for insurance to cover it as to cover acupuncture or hypnosis. For insurers to say "we will cover Christian prayer, but not Muslim prayer" or vice versa, would appear to be government endorsement of a particular religion. But endorsing a practice (prayer) doesn't require endorsing a belief (in a supreme being).

The reason for opposing the provision for covering prayer under insurance is that interventions that have been tested and found to be ineffective should not be paid for by communal funds. That should be a no-brainer in a rationally governed health system. But rational governance is not a covered benefit in the U.S. health "system"!