Posted on 04/30/2019 4:47:24 AM PDT by buckalfa
MOUNDSVILLE, W.Va. Thirty-seven hospitals in two states have filed a lawsuit in Marshall County against numerous opioid manufacturers, distributors, and several individuals.
Stephen Farmer of law firm Farmer, Cline, and Campbell announced the suit, calling it the first of its kind in the United States, Tuesday afternoon.
The complaint filed in court Tuesday claims evidence of a criminal conspiracy that has devastated West Virginia and tens of thousands of its families.
West Virginia University Hospitals, United Hospital Center, and Charleston Area Medical Center Health System are among three of the largest hospitals to attach their name to the suit featuring 27 West Virginia hospitals and 10 Kentucky hospitals in total.
The complaint names 22 defendants across the spectrum of pharmaceutical marketing, distribution, retail, and one known individual. The complaint also names 100 John Doe defendants whose true names the plaintiffs have yet to identify.
In part, the 341-page complaint claims marketing defendants 10 of whom are listed used key opinion Tleaders by funding, assisting, encouraging, and directing doctors and creating, funding, assisting, directing, and/or encouraging seemingly neutral and credible professional societies and patient advocacy groups to profoundly influence, and at times control, the sources that doctors and patients relied on for ostensibly neutral guidance.
The complaint further claims that the marketing defendants pushed to increase opioid sales, while the supply side was sustained by manufacturers and distributors.
On page 20, the complaint claims the defendants systematically and repatedly disregarded the health and safety of the public.
By providing misleading information to doctors about addiction being rare and opioids being safe even in high doses, then pressuring those doctors into prescribing their products by arguing, among other things, that no one should be in pain, especially chronic pain, the Marketing Defendants created a population of addicted patients who sought opioids at never-before-seen rates.
Hopefully we get there. Our administration is just starting to come around in the last few years
These states are teaming up with Tennessee to stop interstate fraud
Alabama, Arkansas,Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky
Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Military Health System, Minnesota
Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania
South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia
It worries me that all of the ‘demonization’ of these drugs is going to make them unavailable to people for whom they can provide relief.
...It worries me that all of the demonization of these drugs is going to
...make them unavailable to people for whom they can provide relief.
30 years ago schedule II narcotics were only prescribed for major trauma, post op pain management, and end of life issues.y Chronic use in non lethal situations was widely understood to cause GREATER suffering in the long term, stripping out the patients ability to defend against pain, and causing, in addition, chronic anhedonia, (inability to feel any pleasure).
Chronic narcotic use was well understood to cause increased long term suffering.
I understand; but all of this is going to make doctors and hospitals reluctant to use them at all. I’ve gone through extremely painful surgery, and know what it’s like to need them.
Ridiculous comparison to be used when discussing a very complex problem. Obviously you haven't read many of the previous, well-informed posts. Drug companies lied about the harmful effects of their products; doctors were pressured on two fronts to prescribe narcotics, first of all by the drug reps, secondly by their hospitals and practices based on patient satisfaction ratings. The more opiates prescribed, the more the patients were satisfied. People are also very individual in their genetic makeup. Some, like me, don't have an addiction predilection, but others are very vulnerable and lose all control. I was once a bartender and quickly learned to spot those customers who had much more profound reactions to the alcohol they drank. Reactions to opiates can work in a similar fashion.
The man I know was using Illinois and Kansas residencies.
Is there someplace I can go for more info on those assigned lobbyists?
Yeah, I having worked in hospital admin in Ky, SC, and WV. People might be surprised at the number of providers who have sought or need to seek intervention.
In the process of getting medically cleared to go to a chiropractor for chronic hip pain (a task I assigned myself to ensure I would do myself no harm), I was prescribed Tramadol for the really bad times. I was prescribed 35 total, about 8 months ago. I have about 10 left.
I dislike even taking advil. I take the Tramadol when the pain is overwhelming, but the chiropractor has made such times very, very rare.
No party in the transaction is truly innocent. The patients, in some cases, demand the drugs. The doctors sometimes use the drugs to placate, and as others have noted some doctors seem to have neglected their basic due diligence in overseeing patient care. The drug companies, however, hold the lion’s share of blame *IF* they lied about the drugs and their addictiveness.
The act of lying would make them shoulder the bulk of the blame, IMO.
I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, so take my opinion for what it is worth - exactly how much I get paid for it! LOL
We don’t have a pain problem in America. We have an addiction problem. People tell doctors they have chronic pain. The doctors tell them things they can do to help with that pain. The patient refuses those things then demands pills to mask the pain. The source of the pain never gets fixed.
A doctor told me that 50% of his pain patients could be greatly relieved by losing weight.
Having worked for 30+ years at three relatively well known hospitals (all three being teaching affiliates of Harvard Medical School) I've seen a few things in my day...surely from a somewhat different perspective than yours (I was Administration).
During my time in the ER of one of those hospitals we had frequent flyer named Charlie.Poor Charlie was,in fact,a hemophiliac who was also addicted to Dilaudid.
In order to get Dilaudid,which he sold as well as used himself,he'd deliberately traumatize his ankles...with the expected result.
Long story short...word got up to "higher authorities", who,after consulting Legal,sent him a registered letter informing him that he was always welcome to receive care at our facility but that in future he would no longer receive narcotic analgesics.
We never saw him,or heard of him,again.
When the law is used to pick winners and losers eventually we will all be losers.....except the lawyers.
I am kind of with you on that. I lost any last skepticism when I saw that companies and the medical community were gradually increasing dosages of class 3 and other opiod based drugs for more sales (Insys).
but one particular hospital association, JCAHO, came out with mandates many yrs ago forcing drs and hospitals to make people pain free and document it , damn it, or be dinged royally in credentialing....
I wonder if JCAHO was one of the " seemingly neutral and credible professional societies and patient advocacy groups".
funny how these demands came down shortly before the opioid "crisis" hit..
people were running from one hospital emergency room to another for their "excruciating" back or abd pain and getting their fix....people would come into the hospital and practically demand the IV dilaudid/phenergan/benedryl fix and get it no matter what even if they were sitting their stuffing their faces, watching cable tv and laughing on their cell phones.
they knew they would get what ever they demanded.
but mostly I blame the individuals and their drug mentalities.....just like the pushing of pot on the populace now, its making us a weaker, stupider society........ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN.....
“...A doctor told me that 50% of his pain patients could be greatly relieved by losing weight.....”
My son-in-law is a doctor he says 50% or more of his patients problem start and end with that problem!
People want to sue somebody!
Go sue snack food suppliers & sue whoever insists we put sugar into everything! And sue whoever insistS we maintain sugar subsidies!
BINGO.
BINGO. Does every one posting understand they are buying into the Left’s Propaganda? Measles Crisis, Climate Crisis, everything is a Crisis now to get you to accept SOCIALISM.
Intractable Pain Patients are Dying of Forced Tapers, Heart Attacks, and Suicides. Not just our Veterans. Government sent them to war, they were permanently damaged are in pain for life, are now committing suicide at a higher rate than the Senior Retirees.
I’ve a niece dying of Lupus, as her organs are failing, she’s been forced to chose between the Seizure med Valium and a pain med. Or her near 14 yr old with Duchenes MD the worse of the 7 forms who will soon start the Organ failure stage will have to go with out pain meds. His life span is not promising.
FDA needs a total overhaul and those ‘IT WILL KILL’ drugs with Black Boxes need removed from the market. 5 Hypertension drugs have been removed because they cause Cancer, that Mesh for Hernias has been recalled all in 6 or so months. The BP meds were made in China.
That Plaquenil my niece takes is a Anti-Malaria drug that destroy’s kidneys, kidneys already in failure. Will it get her vision next? It’s already causing Hypertension Crisis events, scared the lung Dr so bad he sent her downstairs to the ER and never once called in a Cardio or ordered a BP med. And the rural area she lives in has no clue how to manage her or her condition. Kidneys, Lungs, Liver are already trash. Which will kill her first Hypertension Crisis or organ failure?
http://face-facts.org/atip/ THE OTHER HALF OF THE STORY, ABANDONED PATIENTS, HEART ATTACKS AND SUICIDE.
FDA FORCED the CDC to WALK BACK Their LIES. As FORCED TAPERS WERE KILLING INTRACTABLE PAIN PATIENTS, INCLUDING OUR WAR WOUNDED VETERANS.
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