Doctors get order to limit painkiller prescriptions
From the article:
This year, the Indiana legislature passed a law (in compliance with a federal mandate for states) requiring the Indiana Medical Licensing Board to develop an emergency opioid prescribing rule. Its enforcement begins Dec. 15. The law is in response to the out-of-control opioid abuse that is occurring across the nation.
Opioid pain pills have become one of the easiest street drugs to obtain, now exceeding other illicit drug use. Deaths from overdoses have quadrupled in the past 15 years. One in five youths admits to abusing prescription drugs.
You can expect the following if you are prescribed more than 60 opioid pills per month or are on a dose of more than the equivalent 15 milligrams of hydrocodone daily for more than three consecutive months (the regulations do not apply to terminal, nursing home, hospice and palliative care patients).
It is illegal for a prescriber to write a Rx for a person that they have not physically examined in person… but.. it would seem that the bureaucrats (Fed & state) have decided that they can prescribe a LIMIT on how much pain medicine they can be prescribed… regardless of their intensive or source of pain.
The ACLU in Indiana has filed a law suit against AG Greg Zoeller and Medical Licensing Board over the mandatory urine testing as a violation of the fourth Amendment – unreasonable search and seizure.
They have also have singled out that portion of the population that suffer from subjective disease states and only those who are not in a institutional setting (hospital, LTC, Hospice). That same group is a protected group under the Americans with Disability Act… So are they violating their own law that was passed by Congress in 1990 ?
Filed under: General Problems
“The ACLU in Indiana has filed a law suit against AG Greg Zoeller and Medical Licensing Board over the mandatory urine testing as a violation of the fourth Amendment – unreasonable search and seizure.”
This is VERY INTERESTING.
I’m very curious how this turns out.
I NEVER thought of mandatory, random urine testing, was unreasonable search and seizure.
Ooooh, gives me something new to ponder.
I do like it though.
Go ACLU, GO!!
hahahaha!
The last pharmacy that doubted the legitimacy of my opioid script kept pushing back the fill date. I decided to bring them my most recent MRI of my cervical spine so they would not have any doubt in their mind I was a true chronic pain sufferer and not a addict. Now days people who take opioids for chronic pain are viewed as addicts regardless of the chronic pain we suffer from. I have this look to me that I could be either, I’m 58 , I was in my 20’s in the 1970’s , drugs where everywhere and I did my share of smoking weed , back then in the 1970’s everyone smoked weed accept my parents. Now days I cant smoke that stuff anymore , it seems much stronger and too expensive, plus I don’t like that feeling anymore ,time passes, things change. Surprisingly I finally got my script filled 10 days after dropping it off and its less than half of what I use to get just 6 months ago.
The guy working the front register never smiled ,spent almost 20 minutes looking something up on the pharmacy computer and had on too much cologne. I thought about telling him this but didn’t want to bring up any negative subject about him fearing he would give me more trouble. I had to keep my distance because his cologne was making me sick to my stomach .
This past summer everything changed and I did the pharmacy crawl for the first time , that will not happen again. Seems things have fallen apart for true chronic pain sufferers and getting legit, on time, medically necessary opioid scripts filled.
There may be out- of- control opioid abuse that is occurring across the nation, but also we have out – of – control treatment of those that suffer from chronic pain. Seems most that suffer from intractable pain that have legit scripts they cant get filled , this is like torture, legitimate torture that is of good people that don’t deserve this type abuse .
I know of 2 people that cant get their in hand legit opioid script filled and they have given up. They sit at home in severe pain and have no life. One committed suicide in a indirect way just a week ago , he was tired of suffering from never ending chronic pain and being paralyzed from the waist down sitting in a wheel chair not able to leave his home. He had bad bed sores and they became infected wounds and I watched him over a period of time go in to a deep depression. It was horrible to watch this friend slowly lose the will to live because of emotional and psychological distress of the system letting him down. He refused treatment of his infected wounds purposely and this eventually led to his death, the infection from his wounds stopped his heart. His last words to me where, IM TIRED OF BEING IN PAIN, and just like that he coded in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and his heart stopped beating. In a indirect about way I’m happy he no longer has to suffer but infuriated he died this way.
This is what happens when bureaucrats (Fed & State) decide they can put a LIMIT on how much pain medicine that can be prescribed . This is abuse of power they think they have and because of it people die for no good reason.
So I have one less friend today and slowly this number is dwindling , its truly sickening to say the least.
OMG. I am SO SO SORRY for the loss of your friend, and in such a horrific, tragic, and AVOIDABLE way.
Things are getting rough all over the country for us legit chronic pain patients.
We are being looked at and treated like junkies by the pharmacists, our doctors are having to cut our meds down because of stupid laws, and then being denied our pain meds by vigilante pharmacists, is causing many to commit suicide.
It’s not just your friend, I know of several people here where I live, who couldn’t get their meds filled, and in their suicide notes, they stated that, that because they were in so much pain and no pharmacy would fill their medication, they just couldn’t take it any more.
The pain was just too great, and so “opting out” seemed like their best and only option.
It’s horrible, tragic, and avoidable.
NONE OF US should have to deal with what we’re dealing with.
NONE OF US.