One man, we'll call him "M," told us about how the time his toe hurt so much that he was seriously considering shooting it off. He went to the doctor, but his regular guy was on vacation.
M was certain he had gout, but the substitute doctor scoffed. M asked for something more potent than Tylenol or ibuprofen to relieve the pain, but the doctor refused, making M quite angry.
I pointed out that doctors are very leery about handing out opioids these days because addiction and overdose deaths have become an extremely serious problem in the United States. One doctor was just charged for murdering five patients after prescribing lethal amounts of painkillers.
Eventually M saw his regular doctor, who confirmed that he did in fact have gout, and with proper medication and diet the pain was resolved.
One woman at the party, we'll call her "W," said that she had a prescription for OxyContin, one of the major villains in the opioid epidemic. She had been prescribed the drug for an injury, which she said had long since been resolved. But she still had a prescription, and she would go to the pharmacy to pick it every month when they called to tell her it was ready. Her insurance was still paying for it, so why not?
Of the two stories, W's is the one that encapsulates everything that's wrong with health care in America.
First, insurance companies paying for expensive opioid prescriptions that people don't need jacks up insurance rates for everyone.
Second, what kind of quack issues a long-term OxyContin prescription for someone who no longer needs it? Why isn't there any follow up for patients on this highly additive drug?
Third, what kind of person essentially steals drugs they don't need or even use from the insurance company, jacking up insurance rates for the rest of us?
Fourth, if W has kids, what kind of mother puts them at risk of drug addiction by keeping a huge stock of what is essentially legalized heroin around the house? Kids get introduced to prescription drugs at parties and then start looking for a supply at home.
Fifth, what kind of person makes herself a target of criminals by talking about her large stash of oxy in a public place? I'm sure no one there would break into her house, but people do talk, especially when people say such stupid things.
This isn't an isolated incident: it's part of huge problem that's killing Americans much, much faster than the rest of the world.
According to CBS, in 2015 OxyContin and Vicodin killed 17,000+ Americans, more than one and a half times the number of gun homicides. Heroin "only" killed about 13,000 people. Illicit fentanyl (the drug that killed Prince) took almost 10,000 lives.
A UN study just released has found that Americans have the highest overdose death rate in the world, dying at six times the global average:
We're number one!?
And the death rate is still climbing: there were at least 59,000 to 65,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016. The real number is in all likelihood much higher because not every overdose death is tagged as such, because it takes time and money to run the tests to determine cause of death.
Drug companies, doctors and insurance companies are all complicit in these deaths, pushing drugs on people who don't need them and shouldn't have them. Ohio has sued five drug companies for their roles in the opioid epidemic.
People have to exercise some common sense: Percocet, OxyContin and Vicodin are the same as heroin. If you take these drugs for any length of time, you run a significant risk of becoming addicted.
If you get addicted eventually your insurance company will cut you off, and you'll have to get your drug elsewhere: buying pills off teenagers who steal them from people like W, finding an illicit supply of fentanyl manufactured in Mexican drugs labs, or resorting to heroin, which funds the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It seems crazy, but the trail of American overdose deaths runs from the board rooms of the pharmaceutical giants, the drug labs of Mexico and the poppy fields of Afghanistan, directly into our back yards.
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