PHARMACIST STEVE

Top Republicans and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are requesting information from critical stakeholders on how to prevent and treat opioid addiction in Medicare, as the panel seeks to craft bipartisan legislation to curb the opioid epidemic.

Specifically, they’re asking insurers, benefit managers, providers and prescribers

to submit information on how the Medicare program can help stem the opioid epidemic — noting that one in three beneficiaries in Medicare’s prescription drug program received a prescription opioid in 2016.

Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and ranking member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) — along with Health Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and the top Democrat, Sandy Levin (Mich.) — sent the request Tuesday.

By March 15, they’re asking the stakeholders to provide information on overprescribing, data tracking, treatment, communication and education.

The Ways and Means Committee is one of several groups of lawmakers examining measures to clamp down on the opioid epidemic, which saw rates of overdose deaths jump nearly 28 percent from 2015 to 2016.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding its first of three hearings Wednesday to discuss legislation. On the other side of the Capitol, a bipartisan group of eight senators introduced Tuesday a follow up to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed in 2016, dubbed “CARA 2.0.”

There is some 59 million people on Medicare… and those numbers represents mostly elderly (85%) and the balance disabled..  that would represents about 20 million people on Medicare received a opiate prescription in 2016.  It is estimated that there is 20 – 30 million people suffering from intractable chronic pain. Does this suggest that  one in three beneficiaries in Medicare’s prescription drug program received a prescription opioid in 2016 are ADDICTED  because they may have received ONE OPIATE PRESCRIPTION ?  All of those millions of people suffering from intractable chronic pain… if properly treated – would have EACH RECEIVED 24 opiate prescriptions in a year.

For the last SEVEN YEARS there has been 10,000/day baby boomers going on Medicare… is 1/3 of them opiate addicts ?

My money is on… the conclusion will be more restrictions on opiates being prescribed for Medicare folks.

Human nature being what it is… when you give a group the task of finding a solution to a perceived problem.. they will find a solution and never bother to check and see if there is actually a problem to begin with.