Americans spend $34 billion a year on alternative medicine

USA Today, July 31, 2009

A new study shows that Americans spend roughly $34 billion a year out-of-pocket on alternative therapies that aren't covered by insurance. That's a growth of more than 25% in the past decade, says an in-person survey of 23,000 Americans from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health. Alternative therapies now account for 11% of the total amount that Americans spend out-of-pocket on all healthcare.