hi, you obviously have not heard of the dead sea scrolls.

Its just that easy. Start hiring the part-time claims coding processor and get going sending those bills to the insurance companies.

The Roman Catholic church calling reiki a superstition is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. The Roman Catholic church is built on superstition (as are all religions).

But reiki is hardly the only “touch-healing” woo that’s penetrated medical institutions. There’s also “therapeutic touch,” which is just as invalid. In 1998, a 9-year-old conducted an experiment which blew it away … and this experiment was the basis of a paper which was published in JAMA that subsequently stood up to peer review. (See http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-11-17/#feature for more on that.)

It’s great to say there are no side-effects to these things, but potentially there’s an indirect effect, that of possibly discouraging people from getting valid medical treatment, not to mention the waste of time and money that’d have been better spent on effective alternatives.

As someone who works in insurance claims, I would like to say, ugh!!!!

As soon as they recognize it as a covered treatment, the insurance companies will have Independent Medical Examinations and peer reviews for this treatment to find excuses not to cover excessive charges for this sort of thing. There will be actual lawsuits concerning the “medical necessity” of this crap.

There is nothing more ridiculous than to have to read a “medical” report for a pseudoscience or to hear such things recited to a judge. I occasionally have to read reports from acupuncturists and see them give statements under oath. To hear and read adults talking about the “medical standards of gauging one’s Chi or to hear of the patient’s “meridian flows” makes me want to ROTFLMAO. It makes me want to scream out to them, “YOU ARE CHARGING $100 AN HOUR FOR WARMED OVER VOODOO?????”

That’s because magical touching is not in actuality a medical treatment. Wearing a Napoleon hat is also safe and side-effect-free but it’s not going to kill off cancer cells. Neither will magical touching from some charlatan. Reiki might have some value as a placebo (*) but it shouldn’t really be encouraged over actual medicine.

{*) A study has shown, predictably, that “real reiki” and “sham reiki” are equally effective: http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/oct/11/placebos-reiki-cancer-patients-harm