People have found that often it is ineffective in curing chronic diseases and it emphasizes cure rather than prevention. Many medicines can have serious side effects, biomedicine can be very austere and uncaring, costs have soared and the benefits of biomedicine are often poorly distributed. Aging baby boomers are interested in health and wellness, and they are open to using health care outside the boundaries of biomedicine. Boomers shop the medical marketplace for something that works for them, using both biomedicine and complementary health practices. Some insurers have found that covering alternative therapies is cost effective.
Alternative practitioners use several marketing strategies to reach patient-consumers.
They advertise in the media, build referral networks with other providers, use central referral services, participate in health and natural products expositions and form associations with natural and health food stores. While metropolitan areas contain the highest number of alternative practitioners, nonmetropolitan, urbanized areas have the highest number of alternative practitioners per capita. Expanding Options in Health Care. Alternative healers are here to stay, Gordon says, and will probably increase in importance. The question of equity has an ambiguous answer.