CT88, if the OP was anyone else, you'd have a point.***

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449171/medicaid-opioid-problem-has-it-made-epidemic-worse

Ohio, which has enrolled more than 700,000 adults in its Obamacare Medicaid expansion, is seeing worse problems with opioids than ever before. This year alone, the state is on pace for more overdose deaths than the entire United States had in 1990, according to an Ohio county coroner.

According to Andrew Kolodny, a Brandeis University senior scientist and the executive director of Physicians Responsible for Opioid Prescribing, “overprescribing of opioids is fueling the epidemic.”

CDC data indicate that overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999, and that prescription opioids now account for half of all opioid-overdose deaths.

Even more disturbing, studies cited by the CDC have found that “opioid prescribing rates among Medicaid enrollees are at least twofold higher than rates for persons with private insurance.”

The CDC’s own study of Washington State showed that a person on Medicaid was 5.7 times more likely to die an opioid-related death than someone not on Medicaid.

As 15 million able-bodied adults were added to Medicaid through Obamacare, the drug problem only grew worse.

The connection between drugs and massive expansions of government benefits has been seen before.

As the food-stamp program expanded nationally, there was an explosion of EBT cards’ showing up in drug arrests.

The situation reached a breaking point in Maine, where DEA agents said that it is “common practice for drug dealers to take custody of a drug user’s EBT card either as direct payment or in lieu of immediate payment.”

Taxpayers funding the drug cartels.

Felix2

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Re: Now now.

Jul 6, 2017, 2:04 PM

You're right, there is plenty of blame to go around. Click the link below, West Virginia is suing drug companies and distributors for flooding one county with over 40 million doses of opiods. Strangly, we lock up the addicts, but merely fine the suppliers:

"A county in West Virginia is suing 10 wholesale drug distributors — including subsidiaries of Walmart, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS — alleging the companies flooded the state with prescription painkillers, contributing to an epidemic of opioid addiction and overdoses.

Cabell County, which includes the West Virginia city of Huntington, near the state’s western border with Ohio, has a population of about 96,000, but the lawsuit alleges the drug distributors sold local retailers nearly 40 million doses of prescription opioids from 2007 to 2012.

The complaint, filed Thursday in West Virginia federal court, says the companies “opened Pandora’s Box and released a seemingly endless supply of prescription opiates into Cabell County and fed the epidemic while making billions of dollars.”

The other companies named the lawsuit are Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, Kroger, McKesson, and H.D. Smith, all among America’s largest wholesale pharmaceutical distributors. They have not yet responded to the allegations in court.

The companies, which sell popular painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, have repeatedly been blamed by states and local governments for fueling America’s opioid crisis. More than 33,000 people died in 2015 from overdoses caused by prescription pills and illicit drugs such as heroin, and West Virginia has the highest rate of fatal overdoses in the country, with 41.5 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Some of the companies named in the Cabell County lawsuit have been sued before in connection with the opioid epidemic. The state of West Virginia sued Cardinal Health in 2012 and received a $20 million settlement earlier this year after alleging that the company knowingly sold millions of pills to shady pharmacies that doled out the medication without proper oversight. The city of Huntington also filed its out suit against Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen in January 2017. Elsewhere, major drug companies such as Pfizer and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, have paid out multi-million dollar settlements over accusations that they misled the public about the risks of taking painkillers.

https://news.vice.com/story/drug-companies-sued-for-flooding-west-virginia-county-with-40-million-doses-of-opioids

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Has Medicaid Made the Opioid Epidemic Worse?

And I am referring to the legal drug cartels dispensing

So regulation is good when in regards to people's health

So if we eliminate Medicaid, we solve the opioid crisis?***

Classic liberal response.***

So then what are you suggesting?

I agree but...

I don't think anyone is considering that option.

Having difficulties focusing on the subject matter at hand?***

Perhaps other statistically significant variables?***

This is a tough nut to crack.

well that's one way to get them off welfare

I don't know, did it?

Now now.

Re: Now now.

I don't much about the issue, but seems like everyone...

Re: I don't much about the issue, but seems like everyone...

Re: Has Medicaid Made the Opioid Epidemic Worse?

There you go. It's the doctors' fault.***

Why do you scoff at blaming doctors for overprescribing

The doctor measures pain how? Who forces the patient

Legalizing pot for starters***

You're ignorant as usual.

Re: The doctor measures pain how? Who forces the patient

What is the pain measurement scale to get oxycontin?***

Whichever face looks like the winky face.***

There is no scale. You just need an MRI that shows anything.

So cartels and the drug dealers aren't really the ones..

Re: There you go. It's the doctors' fault.***

Right. Couldn't be the patients' fault.***

Re: Right. Couldn't be the patients' fault.***

LOL... a lot of the patients are selling their drugs.***

Doctors are certainly culpable.

Re: Doctors are certainly culpable.

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