Americans spend $34B for alternative medicine

ATLANTA (AP) — Americans spend more than a 10th of their out-of-pocket health care dollars on alternative medicine, according to the first national estimate of such spending in more than a decade.

Chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists and herbal remedies are commanding significant consumer dollars as people seek high-touch care in a high-tech society, the report released Thursday by the government shows.

Altogether, consumers spent an estimated $34 billion on those and other alternative remedies in 2007, the report found.

“We are talking about a very wide range of health practices that range from promising and sensible to potentially harmful,” said Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the federal agency that leads research in this field.

More research into which therapies work is critically needed, because the spending on them is “substantial,” she said.