Medicare Prescription Drug Abuse
- Over the course of a year, the woman received prescriptions for a total of 3,655 oxycodone pills (a 1,679-day supply) from 58 different prescribers, and she filled them at more than 40 pharmacies.
- In another case, a California man received prescriptions for a total of 1,397 fentanyl patches and pills (a 1,758-day supply) from 21 different prescribers in a year
- In a third case, a Texas beneficiary received prescriptions for a total of 4,574 hydrocodone pills (a 994-day supply) from 25 different doctors.
See article at The New York Times.
I was amazed to discover that Medicare can do almost nothing about this. I would think at the very least the authorities could be called in. These drugs are almost certainly being wholesales to drug dealers or being sold on the street.
Sounds almost as bad as Medicaid.
Good point, Devon, though I will add this: What we might call the micro-issue of prescription drug abuse bleeds into other issues, the main one being the Drug War. This is problematic in my view because the government has been arguing that fighting the drug war effectively means tackling the prescription drug abuse problem. They are using the whole pseudoephedrine abuse issue as a start: several years ago, they started monitoring how much pseudoephedrine people were buying and limiting those amounts. While pseudoephedrine is not prescription, it’s harder to buy than plain over-the-counter allergy medications.
I wonder whether the federal government will try to monitor how much of hydrocodone, oxycodone, etc. people are buying at some point and I wonder about the privacy implications of such monitoring. Are we looking at a time down the road when there will be a prescription drug file kept on every other American?
Preferably, they will find a way (if they are not already doing it) to discover the most egregious cases of abuse without resorting to pseudoephedrine-like policies on a wide array of prescription drugs.
Stopping fraud and abuse might be a noble endeavor, but the means used to do so could be intrusive and therefore bad policy if we are not careful.
###Preferably, they will find a way (if they are not already doing it) to discover the most egregious cases of abuse without resorting to pseudoephedrine-like policies on a wide array of prescription drugs.###
To correct what I stated above, I think such is pretty much already in place. The question is, how are they tracking and storing data/information on who’s buying what and how much they are buying. That’s something the public doesn’t know enough about.
If states can track how many decongestants I buy, why can’t Medicare count pain pills?
Maybe it should count pain pills, but there needs to be sufficient privacy safeguards in place. Meaning, there doesn’t need to be a database that stores how much of whatever drug people are buying and taking.
Big Pharma is the REAL drug cartel in North America. Their overmedicating of the American public through obscene advertising leads to nearly 100,000 deaths per year! Prescription drugs are more dangerous than any felony drug substance in the world including heroin, cocaine and even alcohol combined. Read about this issue and what’s killing people at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/07/illustration-friday-800-milligrams.html