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Originally Posted by Noah930
Agreed. Super irritating. And also reflective that the people forcing these rules on us are totally out-of-touch with and/or don't GAF about how things work in the real world.
There's supposed to be some sort of 6-month grace period, but tell that to the patient with a narcotic prescription for post-op pain who is standing in front of a pharmacist who refuses to fill the prescription because it's not on one of the new scripts.
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I've been seeing a lot of stories in our local news lately about these "totally out-of-touch with and/or don't GAF about how things work in the real world" sorts. It seems real-world doctors, hospitals, clinics, pharmacists and such are starting to push back against them regarding what they say is a largely manufactured "crisis", at least with respect to prescription pain killers.
The real-world practitioners are starting to call "bullschitt" on the accusations being leveled against them by government regulators, pointing to statistics that still show the vast majority of this "opioid crisis" lies with illegal street drugs like heroin and fentanyl. They point to statistics that highlight the extremely minuscule percentage of legal prescription users that ever abuse or become addicted to opioids, much less die from overdoses. That remains almost the sole province of the street drug abusers.
Of course government regulators and overseers cannot sue illegal drug dealers. It actually costs real money to pursue them, with no payout at the end. Maybe the law enforcement agency that busts them gets to confiscate some cash, but it's nowhere near the pot of gold awaiting the government at the end of a big pharma lawsuit rainbow. And what an easy, popular target - evil big pharma. Grotesque profits, deep pockets, and now the perfect conspiracy theory. It simply behooves our government to shift the blame to those with the deepest pockets of legal money, money for which they can sue. They sure as hell cannot sue El Chappo and expect anything.
The end result is now an entire class of people - chronic pain sufferers, post surgery patients, and others who do not have access to our very best pain meds. There was a story a month or so ago about a middle aged couple where the husband had some debilitating degenerative spinal condition of some kind. The guy was taking morphine, or demerol, or some other high horsepower opioid daily. The doc cut him off under the new "guidelines". He wrote a long, very thoughtful note, him and his wife went to their favorite park, and he took his own life rather than face the rest of his life in the kind of pain he was facing. I'm sure there are many, many similar stories, not quite as extreme, but nonetheless impacting the lives of people who are now needlessly suffering.
This got pretty personal for me about a month ago, so maybe that's why I'm ranting on so. My wife had surgery in her throat, removing a (thankfully benign) cyst from her vocal chords. Pretty damned invasive stuff, wherein they cut a pretty good chunk out of her vocal chords. They sent her home telling her to alternate Tylenol and Advil. They "no longer prescribed" opioids, even for post surgery recovery. I watched that poor girl suffer for days, unable to sleep, in immense pain. I was ready to drive back to the hospital and introduce a good bit of that into that righteous little prick of a so-called doctor's life. His overly scrutinized prescribing practices had overtaken his concern for his surgery patients' pain during recovery. So that's what it has come to, has it? Really?