Why Isn’t Thermography Covered by Insurance?

Why won't your insurance company cover thermographic scans that could detect breast cancer?

In short, they don't have the proof that they require to tell them that it works.

Or, it may be a more insidious reason.

Mammograms do meet the required burden of proof. They are painful, potentially dangerous and may be causing some of the disease it's searching for, but don't focus on that.

Yeah, it's frustrating. It's easy to hate on the insurance companies. I called mine to ask them about it. Even though the woman on the other end wasn't familiar with the process, she found a specific policy that she was able to share with me lickety split. This page on Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is what she helped me find.

After some more searching, I found this page. It seems to be written by someone in the thermography field, but the gist of what it says is somewhat sad.

...thermography was being used in sports medicine, dentistry, podiatry, chiropractic, orthopedics, rheumatology, and neurology in a variety of support or adjunctive diagnostic roles. It was soon realized that thermography could clearly, objectively, and easily demonstrate the physiological component of pain and injury, especially to the spinal column, due to car accidents, job injuries, and a host of other “tort” related law suits. Everyone involved had benefited from these positive test findings, which could be clearly shown to a jury. Everyone that is except the defendant insurance industry.

Needless to say, the insurance industry in the United States placed an all-out effort to diminish the value of thermography in courts of law due to high litigation costs. Eventually, lobbying efforts at the AMA’s House of Delegates and at Medicare, brought about the removal of thermographic coverage by most insurance companies and the greatly reduced utilization of thermography in the United States. This was most unfortunate for the patients who could clearly benefit from thermal imaging.

So, lawyers were using thermography to sue insurance companies because it so clearly shows where inflammation exists. So, the insurance companies set out to discredit it, and since they needed to discredit it, they couldn't very well recognize it as something that has value for their patients.

Will they ever reverse course and cover it? It's hard to say.