“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
This message is to inform you that The American Patient Defense Union is now open to receiving your personal complaints and grievances in interacting with Healthcare providers, insurers and drug/device companies.
Three categories of complaints will be considered by The Union:
Personal grievances about “process issues” at specific hospitals and practices.
Complications or allegations of harm at the hands of specific practitioners, hospitals or drug/device companies.
Personal financial difficulties, collection notices or bankruptcies caused by specific hospitals, practitioners or insurers.
Please limit your initial communication with The Union to a 500-word email submitted to complaints@patientrights.org. Please describe your grievance as concisely and specifically as possible. Following review and consideration of the information you provide, we will conduct a personal interview by phone in order to strategize with you. No communication with your providers or insurers will take place until we have conducted an interview and obtained your full consent to proceed. If you wish to communicate with us via a secure two-way encrypted email system, please create a free email account at protonmail.com and use it communicate with us.
Please note that The Union is strictly focused on individual patients’ specific and personal narratives of grievance or complication resulting from treatment by specific healthcare facilities, practitioners and drugs/devices in the United States. These can range from simple to complex matters.
The Union hopes to ultimately identify broad practices and policies that are causing financial or physical harm to individual patients across the United States — in order to address public policy issues on a larger scale. However, our strict starting point in all cases will be the individual American patient’s story of difficulties, conflict with or harm by specific practitioners, hospitals, insurers or drug/device companies.
The Union is NOT a law firm. However, in cases where we do believe negligence has occurred, we will recommend that you seek legal guidance.
We are aiming to defend your rights and voice, publicly —You, The American Patient.
The Union seeks to establish large-scale collective bargaining power capable of political lobbying at the state and federal levels with the goal of shifting medical practice in the United States away from a profit-driven corporate mode towards a patient-centered system. In achieving this goal, we need you to rise up and empower this union.
Please note that you are filing your complaint with The Union voluntarily. After verifying the information you provide, The Union will initially use this to generate a professionally-crafted and adequately-measured signal to the healthcare or insurance entity causing the grievance. This signal will be in the form of a letter of warning from The Union, to the entity you are interacting with, requesting immediate action on your behalf. Should the provider/insurer not respond in an adequate or timely fashion, this letter of warning will be shared with the public, the press and all members of The Union in order to maximize public scrutiny/exposure.
Ultimately, as The Union acquires member-driven power, it will provide the litigation services necessary to create changes to the behavior of our healthcare establishment using the individual grievances provided by our members.
Every Patient and citizen/resident of the United States is invited to join The Union. Specific instruction to join, including member fees, will be provided at www.patientrights.org in the near future.
Let’s begin to develop the powerful backbone every American patient needs to defend against harm in seeking a healthier tomorrow.
Yesterday afternoon, President Trump declared America’s opioid crisis a public health emergency, and for good reason: the American Society of Addiction Medicine estimates that there’s nearly 2.6 million Americans with an opioid addiction, and the communities affected include some of our poorest and most vulnerable. The problem is becoming critical, and solving it goes beyond politics to become one of basic human compassion.
The only problem: current guidelines by the FDA and CDC are ineffective, based on a factually‐faulty premise unsupported by evidence, and will almost certainly increase suffering and death without significantly improving the numbers for opioid addiction.
Patients must be prescribed opioids only for durations of treatment that closely match their clinical circumstances and that don’t expose them unnecessarily to prolonged use, which increases the risk of opioid addiction. Moreover, as FDA does in other contexts in our regulatory portfolio, we need to consider the broader public health implications of opioid use. We need to consider both the individual and the societal consequences.
(For this, and all future quotes, all bolding is my own emphasis.)
The CDC goes further with its current guidelines, including a clinical “reminder” that “opioids are not first-line or routine therapy for chronic pain”. It recommends to use as low of a dose as possible for as short of a time as possible, frequently reconsider its upkeep, and to only start them as a last result.
Almost any statement made by public officials relating to the crisis is based on the same two premises: reducing the number of patients receiving long‐term opioid prescriptions is the most effective way to curtail the opioid epidemic, and most opioid addictions start as a result of use that began as legitimate.
Unfortunately, nearly all the evidence we currently have contradicts these foundations. If you’re interested in a detailed, academic look at the topic, there’s a fantastic article written by three doctors — including an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School — appropriately titled “Neat, Plausible, And Generally Wrong”:
Recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for chronic opioid use, however, move away from evidence, describing widespread hazards that are not supported by current literature. This description, and its accompanying public commentary, are being used to create guidelines and state-wide policies.
These recommendations are in conflict with other independent appraisals of the evidence — or lack thereof — and conflate public health goals with individual medical care. The CDC frames the recommendations as being for primary care clinicians and their individual patients. Yet the threat of addiction largely comes from diverted prescription opioids, not from long-term use with a skilled prescriber in a longitudinal clinical relationship. By not acknowledging the role of diversion — and instead focusing on individuals who report functional and pain benefit for their severe chronic pain — the CDC misses the target.
We need to break some statistics down. According to the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 74.9% of nonmedical opioid use happens as a result of people taking medication they were not prescribed, such as those obtained or stolen from a friend or drug dealer. A further 3.1% fraudulently obtained prescriptions from multiple doctors, a practice called “doctor‐hopping”. That’s a total of 78% of sources other than a relationship with a single doctor. That leaves 22% of those who were addicted who do receive their pills from a doctor, but we need to put that number into perspective.
The findings of this systematic review suggest that proper management of a type of strong painkiller (opioids) in well-selected patients with no history of substance addiction or abuse can lead to long-term pain relief for some patients with a very small (though not zero) risk of developing addiction, abuse, or other serious side effects.
Signs of opioid addiction were reported in 0.27% of participants in the studies that reported that outcome.
A scant 0.27% of patients prescribed long‐term opioids for chronic pain showed signs of becoming addicted. The doctors above found similarly‐low rates of addiction with other sources of data.
Responses of addicted patients significantly differed from those of nonaddicted patients on multiple screening items, with the two groups easily differentiated by total questionnaire score. Further, three key screening indicators were identified as excellent predictors for the presence of addictive disease in this sample of chronic pain patients.
It’s important to recognize that scripts written properly aren’t the cause of the epidemic, because — beyond being ineffective — this mindset can actually lead to reduced access to treatment for those with addictions.
Buprenorphine is an opioid that’s used as maintenance therapy, as it has a far lower risk of causing respiratory depression, the primary killer in opioid overdose. Its use as a maintenance therapy is associated with a significantly lower chance of death than leaving addiction untreated; inexplicably, however, the use of buprenorphine was stifled by a 2000 law stating that only 30 patients could be treated at any one time per physician to begin with, and only after jumping through numerous bureaucratic hoops that made it more difficult to prescribe treatment for opioid addiction than the opioids themselves.
[As of June 2017,] only 35,894 providers are currently eligible to prescribe buprenorphine for addiction. Of those 35,894 only about 1/3 actively prescribe the treatment; and these few are further limited by the patient caps.
Prescriptions, given to patients adequately screened by and in possession of a good relationship with the physician, and used by the patient for which they were prescribed, simply are not the cause of the majority of opioid use disorders — diverted prescriptions and irresponsible mass scripts from so‐called “pill mills” are. You may have heard the small West Virginian town of Kermit mentioned in the news recently due to one of their drugstores: “In just two years, drug wholesalers shipped 9 million opioid pills to a pharmacy in Kermit, WV, a town of just 400 people.”
Researchers logged nearly 1,000 cases of doctors being either charged or administratively reviewed for the inappropriate prescription of opioid drugs over an eight year period, and specific high‐profile cases have been the subject of numerous documentaries. Pill mills prey on those susceptible to addiction, and prescribe indiscriminately:
Like the other pain clinics in Portsmouth where Volkman had worked, the clinic only accepted cash — no insurance, no Medicaid. In exchange for $150, patients could expect to receive high doses of pain medications, anti-anxiety agents, and muscle relaxers. In September 2005, according to a search warrant, one Portsmouth Police informant stopped in to see Volkman and received prescriptions for 180 oxycodone pills, 180 Lorcet (a hydrocodone-based painkiller) pills, 120 Soma (a muscle relaxer) pills, and 90 Xanax. Two days later, another informant received a prescription for 270 oxycodone pills, 270 Percocet, 120 Somas, and 60 Xanax. Volkman’s clinics brought in thousands of dollars in cash and pumped out thousands of pills in a region that was already being described in the Portsmouth Daily Times as “The OxyContin Capital of the World.”
It’s an operation driven by profit from the top down, and it’s easy to see how backing the CDC’s position of cracking down on opioids entirely becomes tempting, but there are ways to curtail excessive prescriptions without creating a devastating case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
According to the American Pain Society, there are over 25 million Americans who experience daily chronic pain — pain that affects quality of life every single day. Conditions like lupus, fibromyalgia, Ehlers‐Danlos syndrome, various forms of arthritis, and many more cause pain that is not only severe, but unending. That’s an important number, because it’s just about ten times the number of patients with an opioid addiction.
I’ve made two separate claims: increased suffering, and increased deaths. I’ll start with suffering.
Invariably, you’ll find guidelines instructing doctors to tell patients to pursue “alternative” painkilling strategies first, as if there are myriad wells of untapped relief that chronic pain patients simply ignore.
There aren’t.
We can save time and start with the easy ones: acupuncture doesn’t work. There’s some evidence for massage being somewhat effective for some conditions, but the fact that it’s rarely covered by insurance and the need for ongoing treatment renders the cost/benefit ratio bad. Marijuana is still federally illegal, unavailable in many states, and its presence on a drug test still precludes many employment opportunities for pain sufferers who are able to work. Chiropractic is ineffective pseudoscience that hurts more than it helps. Supplements can cause harm, interact with real medicine, and extraordinarily few have any high‐quality evidence for any condition, including almost none for chronic pain.
That leaves the big one: exercise. “Exercise helps reduce chronic pain!” is repeated often and adamantly, as if it is long‐accepted fact that has a long, positive background in research. Does it?
As recently as April of this year, Cochrane looked over twenty‐one of their reviews of studies regarding exercise for chronic pain, and found that the evidence was generally insufficient:
The quality of the evidence examining physical activity and exercise for chronic pain is low. This is largely due to small sample sizes and potentially underpowered studies. A number of studies had adequately long interventions, but planned follow-up was limited to less than one year in all but six reviews.
There were some favourable effects in reduction in pain severity and improved physical function, though these were mostly of small-to-moderate effect, and were not consistent across the reviews. There were variable effects for psychological function and quality of life.
[…]
Additionally, participants had predominantly mild-to-moderate pain, not moderate-to-severe pain.
Beyond that, the correlation between chronic pain and chronic fatigue is massive, with everything from lupus and fibromyalgia to EDS, rheumatoid arthitis, and Raynaud syndrome causing heavy fatigue, and that in no way comprises a complete list. Despite what the CDC incorrectly insisted for years past being proven inaccurate, exercise invariably makes chronic fatigue, such as found in CFS, worse.
So strike all the chronic pain patients suffering from chronic fatigue. Of the remainder, what about the ones with a strong medical reason not to exercise? Chronic pain caused by physical damage, Ehlers‐Danlos patients unable to exercise or maintain yoga‐esque positions due to frequent joint dislocations, inflammatory conditions that forbid normal ranges of movement, those with heart conditions exacerbated by activity…
We’re left with a small slice of the pie chart for which exercise gets the chance to be effectively used at all, and I would posit that even if there was evidence for it, calling it a replacement for pain management and not something to do alongside it is an act of cruelty. This was stated earlier, but it necessitates repeating: chronic pain is daily. Chronic pain causes real suffering every day, and frequently every hour.
There are no “good days” where you don’t have pain, just days that are “somewhat better than usual”. Imagine this: every day, anywhere from “many parts” to “every part” of your body hurt; unrelenting, bone‐deep aching, nerves that light themselves on fire, jabbing pain coursing through your muscles upon the slightest activity.
If your pain levels average out to 7/10 on a daily basis, would you intentionally up the pain to 9/10 numerous days a week just to — after weeks and months of agony — potentially bring that daily average down to 6/10? Would you feel like you got good value on that proposition? Would you consider it worth it? Would you have the will to keep it up every week until your death, forever? It doesn’t matter if we assume the unsubstantiated claims of notable improvement are true; would you not want pain relief for the days in which your suffering was greatly increased?
Pain needs to be managed, and there are, unfortunately, limited ways to effectively do so. The single most efficacious non-pharmaceutical treatments involve mental mechanisms, such as mindfulness meditation and CBT, which do nothing to reduce the pain itself — merely one’s perception of it. They help, but they can take months to see improvement, and will always leave you with a certain baseline of pain that needs to be treated through some other avenue.
Depression affects up to half of all chronic pain patients. According to studies, risk of suicide is at least double that of controls, with up to 14% of CPP attempting suicide and around 20% of them experiencing suicidal ideation. Causes and levels of chronic pain can be disabling and prevent patients from maintaining gainful employment, or from participating in the hobbies and activities that were once important to them.
Chinese water torture is a process in which water is slowly dripped onto a person’s forehead, allegedly making the restrained victim insane.
The comparison might seem trite, but it’s apropos: the worst part of chronic pain is not the “pain” — it’s the “chronic”. Relentless pain dominates your life in a way few healthy people appreciate. It demands schedules to be built around it; it demands plans to be canceled en masse when it unexpectedly flares; it holds you as a hostage in your own body and taunts you with its permanency. Make no mistake that even with opioids, it makes it more manageable, not absent; completely eliminating pervasive pain is nearly impossible.
If relief is taken away from chronic pain sufferers indiscriminately and under faulty pretenses, the question is not whether it will result in increased disability and suicide — the question is only by how much.
The opioid crisis needs solutions, and quickly, but it also needs those solutions to be factual, effective, and compassionate, and our current theories for how opioid addiction starts and how it needs to end are none of the above.
An expert in treating chronic pain testified for most of Thursday in the trial of former Florence physician Chris Christensen, describing the various options for patients and the many steps needed before prescribing opioids.
In his opening statements, Deputy County Attorney Thorin Geist portrayed Christensen as a doctor who asked few questions and wrote plenty of opioid prescriptions, with some patients receiving the powerful drug within hours of entering his clinic, and others being given a list of opioids from which to choose. Christensen is charged with two counts of negligent homicide, nine counts of criminal endangerment, and 11 counts of distribution of dangerous drugs.
Dr. Patrick Danaher with the Advanced Pain and Spine Institute in Missoula testified that no one who walks into their clinic walks out with opioids that day. He said that after an exam and diagnosis, if opioids are part of the treatment plan the patient needs to see a psychologist, visit https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/erase-my-back-pain-reviews-2021-whats-new/Content?oid=34768096 if you are looking for a natural and harmless chronic back pain treatment.
“They take the patient through a battery of tests and do a pretty thorough interview. It takes two or three hours,” Danaher said, adding that they look for red flags, such as a history of substance abuse. Patients also can undergo the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test so doctors can form a conclusion on whether the patients are goods risk for chronic opioid therapy.
Christensen’s attorney, Josh Van de Wetering, asked how expensive those tests are, having previously noted that Christensen didn’t accept insurance for his patients because of the plethora of paperwork. Danaher said he wasn’t sure, but in cases with low-income patients without insurance, his clinic will either set up a payment plan or forgo payments altogether.
“If they can’t pay we have a program where we can assist them or forgive the debt on a needs basis,” Danaher said. “We don’t advertise it, but we offer it.”
Danaher noted that opioids are quite dangerous, and can cause “respiratory depression” that gradually slows and ultimately stops a person’s breathing, which leads to death.
So instead, his clinic tries to treat chronic pain patients with other drugs that seek to address the cause of the pain, like anti-inflammatories, anticonvulsants, anti-depressants, muscle relaxants, usually most pain conditions are linked to overweight, check these meticore reviews.
“Opioid treatment is just one of the tools,” Danaher said. “There’s so many other things we have to offer.”
His testimony came on the same day that President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis across the nation a public health emergency. (See related story.)
Danaher said he suspects that 30 years ago, doctors were under treating pain patients. With the creation of sustained-release opioids like OxyContin in the 1990s, the pendulum swung to over-prescribing, leading to an opioid epidemic.
“I think that is making its way back to what will be the middle,” Danaher said.
The trial continues today.
Doctor has no idea what the cost to the pt on a mandatory psychological testing that takes 2-3 hrs. No reference as to how many pt or per-cent of pts taking the test show a tendency of having a mental health disease of addictive personality… could that be because a very low per-cent fall into that category and it would suggest that the making the test mandatory is wasting a lot of money and expense for pts. Most Psychologists charge a minimum of $100 – $125/hr. There is a much more simplistic test SOAPP-R https://www.opioidrisk.com/node/1209 and takes 10 -15 minutes.
Dr Christensen was originally OVER-CHARGED with 400 charges… and were reduced to 22 for the trial two counts of negligent homicide, nine counts of criminal endangerment, and 11 counts of distribution of dangerous drugs.
Does this suggest that the prosecuting attorney just pulled the rest of those 378 charges out is his ass when the charges were just made ?
The pain specialist stated that: opiatescan cause “respiratory depression” that gradually slows and ultimately stops a person’s breathing, which leads to death.
Just about anything CAN CAUSE under desirable outcomes.. like drinking too much WATER can cause DEATH, but don’t hear about anyone suggesting that we should suggest limiting access to water.
WASHINGTON — In an unusually close vote, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday recommended the use of a new vaccine to prevent shingles over an older one that was considered less effective.
The decision was made just days after the Food and Drug Administration announced approval of the new vaccine, called Shingrix and manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, for adults aged 50 and older. The panel’s recommendation gives preference to the new vaccine over Merck’s Zostavax, which has been the only shingles vaccine on the market for over a decade and was recommended for people aged 60 and older.
The panel also recommended that adults who have received the older vaccine get the new one.
According to the C.D.C., almost 1 of every 3 people in the United States will contract shingles,
a viral infection that can result in a painful rash and lasting nerve damage.
The disease, also known as herpes zoster, can range in severity from barely noticeable to debilitating. It is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which also triggers chickenpox.
President Trump has now declared the nation’s opioid crisis a “public health emergency.” This important step follows the recommendation by a White House commission, led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to “act boldly,” to stem the crisis.
As this epidemic of drug abuse becomes a growing problem for many states across the country, details of a White House strategy remain unclear. But as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted, the “horrors of opioid addiction come from many dysfunctions, including too many prescriptions, a decline in work, heroin and fentanyl, easy access from Medicaid, and others.”
Understandably then, as reported by a joint task force of the National Association of Counties and the National League of Cities, many communities are already cooperatively bringing together health care professionals, drug makers and distributors, regulators, law enforcement officials and social service providers “to break the cycles of addiction, overdose, and death” as they work through “partnerships across … local, state and federal levels.”
But having let themselves be convinced that communities can somehow sue their way out of complex opioid abuse problems, some state and local prosecutors have taken a more adversarial approach. Not coincidentally, those doing the convincing are many of the same private-sector personal injury lawyers who got rich beyond their wildest dreams with contingency fees two decades ago when they convinced state attorneys general to let them run lawsuits against cigarette makers.
So no one should be surprised that the personal injury lawyers’ national trade group here in Washington hosted in September a “Rapid Response: Opioid Litigation Seminar” to teach attendees how they too might cash in on such litigation. One of the breakout sessions was even titled, “Opioids: The Next Tobacco?”
Never mind that prescription opioid pain-relievers are not like cigarettes. They were developed to address a legitimate medical need. They require Food and Drug Administration approval and stark warning labels about the potential for addiction, and their lawful distribution is closely regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Of course, as we’ve all learned in recent years, what may begin with doctors’ thoughtful prescriptions of lawful medicines for patients’ terrible pain can in some cases end in the streets with overdoses on illegal and deadly drugs such as heroin and fentanyl.
Not to be deterred by facts or nuance, much less the public interest, though, self-interested personal injury lawyers have talked a coalition of 41 state attorneys general into issuing subpoenas for five drug manufacturers that seek information about how prescription opioids were marketed and sold. Several state AGs have already gone further, filing multi-count lawsuits against drug makers and distributors, with dozens of county and city prosecutors following suit. And most of these prosecutors have hired private-sector lawyers to consult or run their lawsuits.
The prosecutors assert that hiring outside counsel on a contingency-fee basis saves taxpayers money since counsel only gets paid if litigation is successful. This simple rationale, however, overlooks the conflicts of interest and corruption to which such arrangements have often led. A litany of these types of abuses has been chronicled for more than a decade by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series.
This reporting has revealed that politically influential plaintiffs’ lawyers frequently shop their ideas for potentially lucrative lawsuits against corporate defendants to friendly state prosecutors who then hire the lawyers, expecting generous pay-to-play campaign contributions later.
Thus the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) urges all policymakers to insist that the public interest in health and safety is never compromised by private interests. This principle has animated ATRA’s efforts for more than a decade to push commonsense reform statutes — successfully in 18 states so far — that promote accountability and transparency when public authorities choose to hire outside counsel on a contingency-fee basis.
Too many Americans are suffering serious drug abuse problems, and our leaders must work together to find good-faith solutions. They ought to be relying for guidance on caring and knowledgeable experts inside and outside of government. Because to rely on trial lawyers instead is to invite other problems that neither policymakers nor their constituents need.
ARLINGTON, Va. — With President Donald Trump set to declare a national opioid emergency this week, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores has suggested four public policy initiatives to the Administration and members of Congress. The suggestions, outlined in a letter sent Tuesday, are aimed at building on current collaborative efforts to stem opioid abuse while maintaining high-quality patient care, NACDS said.
“These four integrated public policy strategies would further reduce the volume of unneeded and unused opioid medications entering the public domain, and reduce the chances that they fall into the wrong hands – while taking into account the needs of those most severely affected by chronic pain as a result of cancer and other serious illnesses,” NACDS president and CEO Steve Anderson said. “The fact that these public policy proposals are gaining traction among those in the healthcare and enforcement communities reflects that much-needed consensus may be starting to build for additional and sound approaches to this epidemic.”
Among the suggestions is a seven-day supply limit for initial opioid prescriptions issued for acute pain — a limit that is in-line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The letter notes that 20 states have already taken action on this issue, calling for federal legislation to ensure consistent care.
NACDS’ letter also calls for federal legislation mandating electronic prescribing for controlled substances — something that currently only happens for 14% of controlled substance prescriptions. Earlier this year, NACDS voiced its support for the Every Prescription Conveyed Securely Act, which was introduced in August.
The e-prescribing mandate would be one way to enhance security while curbing fraud, waste and abuse. It also would provide a foundation for improving security through a national prescription drug monitoring program that would harmonize varying state requirements for reporting and accessing PDMP data, creating a single system. A national PDMP would use e-prescribing to offer providers and dispensers real-time guidance for patients, NACDS said.
The organization also suggested the use of manufacturer-funded envelopes that patients could use to mail back unused opioids. The envelopes would be available at pharmacies upon request, and their use could be reinforced by a state-legislated mail-back program, NACDS said.
The letter also notes the need to regulate synthetic opioids, the importance of advancing prescriber education tools through the Food and Drug Administration’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies for opioids and the need for enhanced treatment for patients with opioid abuse disorders, among other approaches.
“As public health authorities have indicated, face-to-face interactions between pharmacists and patients have made pharmacists keenly aware of the extreme challenges and complexities associated with this epidemic,” Anderson wrote in the letter. “Based on this first-hand experience and our commitment to the patients and communities we serve, NACDS remains steadfast in our efforts to partner with law enforcement agencies, policymakers, and others to work on viable strategies to prevent prescription drug diversion and abuse, including prescription opioids. Chain pharmacies engage daily in activities with the goal of preventing drug diversion and abuse.”
It would appear that the National Association of Chain Drug Stores is ON BOARD with all the various alphabet soup of federal agencies’ agenda on the opiate crisis. Not one word in this letter about the “needs” of the chronic pain pts !
So what many pts who patronize chain drug stores have experienced in the past about not being able to get their controlled substance prescriptions filled and given a multitude of reasons/excuses why they can’t have their controlled substance prescription filled.
from the NACDS letterChain pharmacies engage daily in activities with the goal of preventing drug diversion and abuse.”
So the fewer controlled prescriptions they fill …they will be reducing the potential of drug diversion and abuse… but.. that only applies to legal opiates… will not touch – maybe increase – the reported 100 million that the drug cartels sell “on the street” of ILLEGAL OPIATES.
Of course, the denial of a chronic pain pt’s legal prescriptions could force those pts to commit suicide or in desperation … turn to trying to get some relief and buying street drugs and risking an unintentional OD and if they survive, then they will be labeled as having a “opiate use disorder”.
There are options to the CHAIN DRUG STORE… there are some 21,000 – 22,000 independent pharmacies in this country and generally your copays will be the same as from the chains. Unlike the chain employed Pharmacists, the Pharmacist of the owners is not guaranteed a paycheck every pay period regardless if they fill your legit/on time/medically necessary prescription(s) or not.
Many independents provide delivery home at no charge and must less likely to treat you like a addict/criminal and most are much better staffed… so the wait time to get a prescription filled is generally much shorter.
I had my own independent pharmacy for 20+ yrs… so I am very familiar with the concept and mindset of the Pharmacist/owner.
Generally independents can order medication Monday – Thursday and get it the next day… some may take a extra day. The drug wholesalers are rationing controls to all pharmacies … so that may come into play when they can get controls back into inventory.
If the independent is a little bit longer drive, talk to the pharmacist into “syncing your meds” …where they set it up that you get all your meds every month on the SAME DAY… How many trips/month are you now making to get all your meds ? Take all your prescriptions to the independent… if the chain that you have been patronizing is only interested in filling your non-control prescriptions and not your controls… do they deserve to have any of your business ?
Today, after a successful ACLU court case and persistent grassroots action, we helped achieve justice for Jane Doe, a 17-year-old-woman who came to the U.S. without her parents and is in a government-funded shelter. The Trump Administration did everything imaginable to force her to stay pregnant against her will.
This morning Jane was able to end her pregnancy safely and legally. It’s her decision – that’s still the law in this country.
We still have much work to do to overturn the outrageous policies at the heart of this issue and secure justice for ALL Janes. We know there are many more Janes out there: young women being held in federal custody who are being denied the ability to get abortion care and coerced and shamed for their decisions.
But, today, the most powerful words I can share with you are those of Jane herself. Here’s an excerpt from a statement she released earlier today through her guardian:
“No one should be shamed for making the right decision for themselves. I would not tell any other girl in my situation what they should do. That decision is hers and hers alone.
I’ve been waiting for more than a month since I made my decision. It has been very difficult to wait in the shelter for news that the judges in Washington, D.C. have given me permission to proceed with my decision. I am grateful for this, and I ask that the government accept it. Please stop delaying my decision any longer.
My lawyers have told me that people around the country have been calling and writing to show support for me. I am touched by this show of love from people I may never know and from a country I am just beginning to know – to all of you, thank you.
This is my life, my decision. I want a better future. I want justice.”
Thanks to everyone, especially the entire ACLU family and activists like you, who fought to give Jane the justice she deserves.
Keep fighting!
Brigitte Amiri ACLU attorney, fighting for reproductive rights
P.S. There’s still time to add your name to our petition, which we’re delivering to the Health and Human Services Department tomorrow, calling on the Trump Administration to stop denying women their basic human rights. Click here to add your name to the petition.
Even as President Donald Trump was preparing to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, a Republican congressman was criticizing the federal Drug Enforcement Agency for stonewalling an investigation to help solve the problem.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) criticized the DEA for failure to cooperate with a congressional investigation into alleged opioid pill dumping by major drug companies in West Virginia. About 9 million hydrocodone pills were shipped over two years to a single pharmacy in a rural town of fewer than 400 people. The DEA has not yet released the identities of the companies suspected of supplying the pills.
“To me, this is a pretty basic question. Who are the suppliers?” Walden said.
Walden, who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is conducting the probe, threatened to issue a subpoena for the information “because we are done waiting.”
“I’m going to be very blunt: My patience is wearing thin. Our requests for data from the DEA are met with delay, excuses and, frankly, inadequate response,” Walden said as he opened a committee hearing Wednesday. “People are dying. Lives and families are ruined. It is time for DEA to get this committee the information we need, and to do it quickly. No more dodges. No more delays.”
He pointed out that opioid overdoses last year alone killed “more Americans than the entire Vietnam War.” In his state of Oregon, overdoses kill more people than car accidents. An estimated 91 lives are lost in the nation each day due to opioid overdoses.
Walden said the committee was still missing information requested from DEA back in May. DEA officials said they were “unaware” of some information, such as data concerning delayed or blocked enforcement action against drug companies, according to Walden. Yet the committee managed to obtain the information from an anonymous source. “Enough is enough,” said the irritated congressman.
“Sir, we appreciate your concern and, absolutely, we are treating it with the utmost importance, as it should be treated,” DEA Deputy Assistant Administrator Neil Doherty told Walden at the hearing. “There is no reason for the extended delay of the questions. … We will make every effort to expedite every request that is outstanding.”
An investigation earlier this month by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” revealed that Congress — pressed by pharmaceutical company lobbyists and wooed with campaign contributions — stripped the DEA last year of key crackdown tactics against companies whose drugs end up on the streets.
Trump had nominated Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), a pivotal supporter of the DEA limits, to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. But Marino withdrew his name from consideration after the Post report.
West Virginia counties have filed suit against drug companies and pharmacies, and other states are now taking similar action.
Many of the regions that backed Trump in last year’s election are being hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic. On Thursday, the president stopped short of declaring the problem a national emergency, which could have freed billions of dollars for the fight. His declaration of a public health emergency did not specifically release funds or name an amount to address the problem, but he is expected to ask for extra money to battle the crisis, The New York Times reported.
