In pre-Maoist China, acupuncture was community medicine, meaning it was available to the common man and woman. There were no such concepts as $5000 deductibles, visit limits, waiting periods, and other fine-print exclusionary language which is increasingly commonplace for many Americans under the "managed care" system.

As more and more Americans find themselves lacking options for health care, the health standard of our nation continues to decline across a broad measurement of international standards. Many people believe that the current system is unsustainable and will likely collapse within 5 to 10 years.

At a clinic in Portland, Oregon, Working Class Acupuncture (WCA), founders Lisa Rohleder, Skip Van Meter, and Lupine Hudson have developed a sustainable acupuncture practice model which addresses the inequities of the current health care system. This has proven enormously successful from a community health perspective, with hundreds of people every week receiving high-quality care.

The WCA founders have organized the principles guiding their mission into a national movement by launching the Community Acupuncture Network (CAN), a nonprofit organization which seeks to promote the CA principles within the acupuncture profession.

Since 2006, a network of Community Acupuncture clinics subscribing to the Community Acupuncture(CA) principles have sprouted up around the country.

• Low prices on a sliding scale with no means testing (between $15 to $40)
• Patients are treated in a common area which facilitates everyone's healing
• Group "chi" isn't restricted by walls and the pooled energy is shared by everyone
• Isolationism and class barriers are dissolved in the community room

With health care systems in America crumbling, we would do well to heed the advice of Bill McKibben, the noted deep ecologist: "The technology we need most is the technology of community—the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done."