patrick.net

This is a good thing for the country.

The article blames opioid and alcohol related deaths. They mentioned 50K deaths per year from drug overdose. Back of the envelope calculation shows that is 0.016% / yr chance of offing yourself in the US. Multiply by 78 yrs, and you get 1.25% chance of offing yourself over your life span. If 1.25% off themselves at mid-life, that is an average of 40 yrs * 1.25% = 0.5 yrs of expected life loss. So, that is 0.1 yrs / 10K deaths. They mentioned an increase in overdose rate from 52K to 64K from 2015 to 2016. It seems to me that is a reasonable assumption to blame overdoses, although, it would be nice if someone analyzed the data more accurately.

You could clearly tie this back to Obamacare and over-prescribing if you want. It's not clear that is the root cause, though, as alcohol related deaths are also on the rise. Maybe blame O-care for making people more desperate? Obamacare did need reform, and overdiagnosis / over prescribing is an issue. I don't think that shooting it in the head (mandate removal) while doing tax cuts was the answer, though.

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW says

It's not clear that is the root cause, though

Well you got more desperate people, and the drug corporations figured out that they could get in in the drug dealer business, with FDA approval, and probably encourage doctors to prescribe opioids.

I'll say this again: a person I know was prescribed opioids FOR A COLD. "it will make you feel better and you will sleep better" the doctor said.
This is how you can trust your doctor in the US.
Anything goes, as long as you can make money.

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW says

You could clearly tie this back to Obamacare and over-prescribing if you want.

I tie it to that and the "sequestration" of research funding, the diversion of resources, and the larger conceptual problem of pretending that it was a "public health" policy.

As Whole Foods founder Mackey said, if you want to promote public health, give everyone vouchers for healthy food. I would add free vaccines for everyone willing to get vaccinated. Instead, we tax vaccines and subsidize the most unhealthy foods, e.g. corn-fed CAFO beef. The public are reduced to CAFO cattle, fattened for the most lucrative slaughter: the meaning and purpose of your life is to empower (including enriching) the patronage networks that wrote the policy.

This is not government "for the people," although it is of and by the people. It divides and misrules in order to distract the people from their own interests. It dismayed me that we cut research at precisely the time when it has the best chance of improving public health, but that is the point: entrenched industry players protected themselves from disruptive innovation and international competition, in order to raise prices on the same old things rather than competing globally on price and innovating to improve results.

Heraclitusstudent says

a person I know was prescribed opioids FOR A COLD. "it will make you feel better and you will sleep better" the doctor said.

Purdue and the Sacklers made billions of $ from the Oxycontin fraud, despite (a) executives admitting fraud, (b) research finding Oxycontin less effective than cheaper competitors. Morphine tablets cost less than $0.10 each and can last longer than the "12 hours" falsely claimed by Purdue, but Oxy gets prescribed and even possessing morphine is a federal crime. That's the patronage power model: use government to subsidize infinitely whatever junk you're selling, and to incarcerate your competitors.