Posted on 03/14/2016 7:52:55 PM PDT by Olog-hai
An emotional Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday signed what he called the most comprehensive law in the nation to combat an opioid addiction scourge, including a seven-day limit on first-time prescriptions for opiate painkillers.
The Republican governor struggled to maintain his composure while recalling families he had met — some standing behind him at the Statehouse ceremony — who had lost loved ones to a “deadly, merciless epidemic” and others who were desperately seeking help for a family member.
In recent years, the opiate-abuse epidemic has claimed thousands of lives in Massachusetts. The law, which was given final approval by the Legislature last week, establishes new rules and procedures for the prescribing of opiate painkillers. Supporters of the limits say most heroin addicts first become hooked on painkillers that were either prescribed or obtained illegally. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Well, you know, suffering is ennobling,
if someone else does the suffering.
"'Fractured tibia, sergeant'? 'Fractured tibia, sergeant'? Ooh. Proper little mummy's boy, aren't we? Well, I'll tell you something, my fine friend, if you fracture a tibia here you keep quiet about it! Look at him! (looks more closely) He's broken both his arms and he don't go shouting about it, do he? No! 'Cos he's a man - he's a woman, you see, so don't come that broken tibia talk with me. Get on at the double. One, two, three, pick that crutch up, pick that crutch right up."
It's temporary. It passes in time as you recover.
I don't think there is a pain pill or oral pain medication that actually works these days anyway. They used to keep you in the hospital to manage acute pain so they could medically manage your condition. Now the hospitals are not allowed to admit patients for much of anything. Everything is cattle call outpatient surgery. Insurance companies and HMO organizations refuse to allow you to stay in a hospital. They pay the hospitals a bonus to not admit you, and if they do it's only authorized on a daily basis at the say-so of an insurance company that calls the hospital up to three times a day trying to get you out.
I had a tooth vertically cracked down to the root. My dentist said I would need to be referred to a specialist.
Okay, when can I get an appointment? They sent me to a place that could see me in three weeks. I asked for enough painkiller for three weeks. They said I could get three days worth. I guess I was supposed to sustain on aspirin for eighteen days. Went back to the original dentist, who said that was the way things worked.
So I got on the internet and found a specialist thirty miles closer to me than the dentist’s pals, and who could see me that afternoon. Never went back to the original dentist and never intend to. What a-holes.
One unmentioned aspect of the heroin epidemic is the number of “normal” people that get caught up in it because they can’t afford the legitimate prescriptions they’ve used in the past; the heroin is cheaper, and the result more or less inevitable over time...
I never imagined such pain. Intravenous Dilantin for two weeks every two hours was a close second. I think I would have prefered the brain swelling.
“including a seven-day limit on first-time prescriptions for opiate painkillers”
Insanity, all it does is penalize those who really need it.
I get mucus blocked ear tubes every winter.
The doctor tells me to use double dose pseudoephedrine to clear it so that I can hear. The problem is that I can only buy enough to allow be to hear for 20 days during each month. I have to ration the damn things so that I can hear during work. This makes it such that I can’t watch TV at night, because I haven’t got enough pills.
This is bad enough, but if I were in pain and these idiots limited my pain meds, it would be terrible.
It isn’t a war on drugs, it’s a war on sick Americans, just so some liberal bozo can feel good about himself.
I don’t care if junkies wind up killing themselves, it’s the poor saps who are ill and have no choice that suffer.
In California you have to visit your Doctor every thirty days, and basically beg your doctor for a refill.
Yes. This is dangerous for people who truly suffer and need pain relief. They will leave them to suffer.
I am sick of this. Stand in line to show my ID to get my OTC sudafed because of meth heads. Now they are messing with pain meds. We should all suffer to prevent the abusers abusing. This country is in the toilet. Time to go ahead and flush. SMOD.
*** This is a disaster for chronic pain people. ***
I have a friend who owns a small company. She suffers from an illness for which most people go on ssdi, and never work again. She suffers chronic, at times, nearly intolerable pain.
She provides jobs, opportunities for advancement in the company, and quarterly raises for hardworking (show up for work), competent employees.
She takes opioids, prescribed by her physician, as well as other meds. Her insurance is sky high, and co-pays on some med’s have evaporated. Yet she keeps on.
The new restrictions regarding opioids are a PITA. The do gooders that come up with them seek blanket solutions for the abusers that hurt those with chronic pain.
I worked for a Physician (neurologist/psychiatrist) once whose specialty is addiction.
He was hesitant to give opioids for pain control to his mother in law who was dying painfully of brain cancer “because she might become addicted”.
I said to him, “Are you f***g nuts? Who cares if she becomes addicted? She’s going to be dead in less than a month.”
I would like to see common sense when it comes to prescribing opioids, and not a lot of what is floating around some circles of thought.
I had a cold last year.
No big deal but I sent my 18 year old grandson to Rite-Aid for some Coricidin,which I have taken for many years.
They wouldn’t sell it to him-—had to be 21.
I was stunned.
.
Fixed it.
Why does the government interfere between a doctor and a patient?
If someone is addicted and has no medical need for it, shouldn’t that be up to the doctor?
I feel bad for people who really need to rely on pain medication for legitimate reasons. I was with a friend who had to appear in a small court room in Central Kentucky a few years back and I could not believe what I was witnessing. Nothing, but poor white people whose lives had been ruined by no jobs, pain pills, meth and heroin. It literally felt like I was sitting among dead people. I looked at all those people sitting around me and felt so ashamed as what has happened to America but especially rural America. This was not some inner city ghetto, these were the people Obama was talking about when he said under him electricity would unnecessarily skyrocket or something similar if I remember correctly. Hillary said last night on CNN that lots more coal people were going to be losing jobs if she’s elected so she is going to finish was Obama started. What I witnessed in that court room that day is why Donald Trump needs to build that damn wall to stop the drug flow from Mexico and yes, Mexico is going to pay for it. This was several years back and I can only imagine how much worse the drug situation is in this small American community just like thousands of other small American communites all over this country these days.
By the way, one failed, had to be taken out, 3 months of IV antibiotics, and then a final surgery to put a new knee prosthesis back in.
Thank goodness for opioids. It was a tough year, but I am fine now.
may God save us from the scourge of ‘the government’ trying to help us
Fifty Percodan every three days? What, are you Winona Ryder?
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