04/06/2026

You Were Right to Step Away. But Now It’s Time to Look Again.

As part of this effort, the Arizona Association of Chiropractic Reimbursement Fairness Committee will be providing a series of concise, focused articles.

Wayne Bennett, DC, DABCO
Chairman, AAC Reimbursement Fairness Committee

Watch a Quick Video Here

Over the past decade, many of our most experienced chiropractors made a difficult—and entirely rational—decision: they stepped away from insurance-based care.

They did so after years of navigating arbitrary utilization limits, opaque medical necessity determinations, burdensome prior authorization requirements, and reimbursement structures that failed to reflect the complexity of modern neuromusculoskeletal care. Walking away was not a failure. In many cases, it was the only way to preserve clinical integrity.

But something else happened at the same time.

The patients who depended on that care—particularly the elderly, disabled, and financially constrained—did not follow. They remained within a system that has continued to narrow access, restrict services, and apply outdated clinical frameworks to complex, chronic conditions.

In effect, the system did not lose providers. It lost its most experienced ones.

And patients were left behind.

For years, it has felt as though this problem was simply too large, too entrenched, and too structurally reinforced to meaningfully change. That perception was understandable. But it is no longer entirely accurate.

Today, a convergence of factors is shifting the landscape: increased regulatory scrutiny of third-party administrators, transparency requirements through machine-readable files, the emergence of AI-driven claims and utilization analysis, and coordinated professional efforts—such as the Arizona Association of Chiropractic’s Reimbursement Fairness Committee—are creating, for the first time, a viable path forward.

This is not about returning to a broken system.

It is about fixing one that patients still depend on.

If you stepped away, you were not wrong. But the conditions that made change impossible are beginning to change themselves.

The question is no longer whether the system is flawed.

It is whether we are willing to re-engage—strategically, intelligently, and together—now that change is finally within reach.

 As part of this effort, the Arizona Association of Chiropractic Reimbursement Fairness Committee will be providing a series of concise, focused articles designed to clearly outline the What, Why, and How behind these issues—from reimbursement inequities and utilization controls to patient impact and pathways for meaningful reform.

This is a critical moment for our profession and for the patients we serve. We strongly encourage you to stay engaged, follow this series, and take a few minutes to watch the video linked below, which provides an overview of the challenges surrounding reimbursement equality and transparency—both here in Arizona and across the nation.

Awareness is the first step.

Action must follow.

Here is an overview video. Please watch for more information!