From the Harrison Narcotic Act…
The provision protecting physicians, however, contained a joker hidden in the phrase, “in the course of his professional practice only .” 7 After passage of the law, this clause was interpreted by law-enforcement officers to mean that a doctor could not prescribe opiates to an addict to maintain his addiction. Since addiction was not a disease, the argument went, an addict was not a patient, and opiates dispensed to or prescribed for him by a physician were therefore not being supplied “in the course of his professional practice.” Thus a law apparently intended to ensure the orderly marketing of narcotics was converted into a law prohibiting the supplying of narcotics to addicts, even on a physician’s prescription.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu8.html This article makes some very interesting reading..
The ICD9 coding system is owned and maintained by The American Medical Assoc… that is what helps make them so powerful.. they get royalties off of this coding system… that the whole medical system uses for billing… and thus have no financial dependency from of any other group, unlike most other associations.
http://www.icd9data.com/2012/Volume1/290-319/300-316/304/default.htm
I know that not much with our bureaucracy makes sense… and I don’t know if that is intentional or unintentional… but.. If our healthcare system has decided that addiction is a disease and the Americans with Disability Act makes discrimination a civil rights violation…. Is that part of the war on drugs that deal with physicians treating addicts… ILLEGAL…? Particularly since the original determination that addiction is NOT A DISEASE… was made by LAW ENFORCEMENT.
Perhaps, this is the same philosophy behind the fact that we have an ATTORNEY as Ebola Czar .. a medical crisis…
Filed under: General Problems
The ICD9 system is NOT owned by the AMA. The ICD9 system is owned by the WHO. However, CPT is fully owned and copyrighted by the AMA.
Per Steve… thanks for the correction.. but.. they are still a financially independent association
The proper treatment of opiate addiction (dependence) is treatment, plus a few drugs used to help them withdrawal safely and comfortably.
But yeah, the DEA BUTTING IN is ridiculous since they should not have access to any info about any patient unless a crime occurred and there’s probable cause to get very limited and specific info.