re: WP: 76 Billion Opiates Legally Distributed in USA from 06-12

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What's that broken down by prescriptions per citizen?

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I'm not sure how many pills come in a script, but if we assume 50 pills, that is roughly 5 prescriptions per citizen over 5 years, or roughly one script every year for each man, woman, and child in our nation.

And that is nothing short of negligent.

I wrote an article awhile back (2016) that stated that for every Alabaman, there were 1.2 scrips for opiates currently that year.

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Of course it had nothing to do with the government and other agencies like The Joint Commission along with the media pushing, absolutely pushing pain as "the fifth vital sign" during the late 1990s. When are the leeching plaintiff attorneys going to go after them?

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Correct! My wife was an intensive Care Nurse at that time. It was a hospital policy to have "Zero Pain".
I had three surgeries during that period. I was asked three times, after a surgery if I needed something for pain. I answered "No" each time.
Its a shared catastrophe. Most patients knew the risk of continuing to take the poison.

Hospitals were cited if they didn't constantly ask about pain and have it prominently in the treatment plan. The Joint Commission needs it's shite pushed in over that. CMS as well. But, the leeches won't sue them, they're going for the money, that's the pharma companies.

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My teen just had oral surgery and they gave him 20 hydrocodones. He tried a half one and said he didn’t need it. He didn’t ask for them. Opioids are still oversubscribed by non pill mill doctors

This is why you think it’s ok for docs to overprescribe these drugs?

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Do you really think 20 pills is overprescribing? No one gets addicted on 20 pills.

Doctors give you a small prescription of pain meds just in case you need them. You didn't have to fill the prescription. You don't have to take them.

But it is absurd to think this is overprescribing. The alternative is for the doctor to give out one day's prescription at a time. This only increases the time and cost required by the doctor, the insurance company, and the patient. The pharmacists probably wouldn't mind since they get paid per prescription, though.

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It's ridiculous to blame anybody but the doctors, unless there is verifiable proof that there was some corrupt, under the table like deal that these corporations made with the doctors to prescribe these drugs that provided an extra monetary incentive to do so. I know this can happen on the sales side.

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There are plenty of bad doctors.
But this is more complex than physicians getting kickbacks for writing meds, which is essentially nonexistent today and highly illegal. With as much money as can be made with legal but shady practices, I doubt there is a significant amount of purely illegal money exchanging hands for this. I'm sure you can find an example where it happens. I do not think you'll find many.


Opiate manufacturers more or less created these 'safe' opiates for noncancer pain. The group that audits hospitals (Joint Commission) would give poor marks (with actual consequences to the hospitals and providers) for undertreating pain because the drugs were touted as safe by the manufacturer, so there was basically no excuse for undertreating pain. Physicians were put in a precarious position a lot more often than you may realize for 'undertreating' pain and withholding opiates. Some bought into the concept of 'pain as the 5th vital sign' and write the med like it's going out of style, increasing doses as tolerance developed because that's how the medication works, and even respiratory depression (the thing that causes death from overdose) goes away as tolerance develops.
Other physicians simply begrudgingly wrote the meds when they found no good reason not to.
Others still refused to write it essentially for anyone no matter what.


None of these groups were or are actually wrong. The first group gets taken advantage of. The middle group was often viewed as an a-hole a decade ago and reasonable today. The last group were considered assholes then and assholes now. But they tend to be the ones that send referrals to pain management when it seems necessary, and there is newish evidence that chronic noncancer pain patients on opiates wind up dealing with more pain and worse quality of life than those who never are started on them, again due to the tolerance associated with the medication and the way the body regulates its sensation of pain over time in the presence/absence of opiates.


It is far more complex than "it is the doctor's fault."
Far fewer assholes exist than most people think.
Highly trained people who have the ability to act on current data without mounds of research interpret it differently. The results of their actions become the data for the future. It is unfortunate for many to be part of the test without knowing or intending to do so.

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Relax

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Wasn't necessarily meant for you. Was meant for everyone else blaming everyone but the people actually ingesting the drugs. You just made a good point that I wanted to quote.

Craziness. So many people hooked on that nonsense.