The Federal Government's Dr. Feel Good Opioid Policy

Should we be shocked that with the advent of Obamacare, Americans all of a sudden have an opioid epidemic? Libtards create government funded problems then have the audacity to act surprised when it backfires. Worse, they don’t have the intellectual curiosity to understand what went wrong. For instance, did you know there is an American Pain Society? I sure didn’t, but here is an article describing the government’s Dr. Feel Good policies: 

For one thing, the Veterans Health Administration was one of the earliest adoptersof a pain management strategy called “Pain as the Fifth Vital Sign,” originally advocated by the American Pain Society.

The intention was good — to ensure that patients don’t suffer unnecessarily. But there’s now widespread agreement that pain should never have been treated as a vital sign and that, sadly, this assessment and treatment protocol contributed to the over-prescription of opioid painkillers.

Doctors outside of the VHA system faced pressure from the government as well: The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services included questions about pain management in patient satisfaction surveys that were linked to payment, encouraging a standard of patient-pleasing over good medicine. This — along with the example set by VHA policy — fostered a culture that encouraged health-care providers to offer pain-relieving prescriptions, popular with patients, without adequate regard for the potential long-term consequences. Fortunately, these survey questions have been removed



It wasn’t just pain management surveys in Medicare and Medicaid; the Joint Commission (JC) that pushed more providers to over-prescribe also played a role. The JC has a unique statutory mandate to accredit hospitals to treat (and be reimbursed for) Medicare patients. Most states also rely on JC accreditation as a prerequisite for Medicaid reimbursement as well. These are by far the biggest payers in American health care. If the JC says jump, hospitals ask, “How high?”



I remember President Pen and Phone telling a woman at a town hall meeting that instead of treating her elderly mother, it would be cost effective if the government gave her a pill to ease the pain. Now look at what we got.


Source:

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2018/05/03/the_governments_role_in_the_opioid_epidemic_110783.html