(August 5, 2018 at 7:25 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/...mayo-study
Quote:Despite all the attention given to the opioid overdose epidemic in recent years — including the fact that the epidemic began with an increase in the prescribing of opioid drugs in the late 1990s — opioid prescription rates have remained flat among commercially insured patients for the past 10 years, according to a study published this week in the BMJ.
And among some groups of Medicare patients, the rate at which opioid prescriptions are being handed out by doctors is actually higher than it was 10 years ago, the study reports.
“Our data suggest not much has changed in prescription opioid use since about five years ago,” said Molly Jeffery, the study’s lead author and a health economist and health services researcher at the Mayo Clinic, in a released statement.
That’s a deeply worrisome finding, given the substantial role that legally prescribed drugs have played in the opioid overdose epidemic.
An average of 40 people die each day in the U.S. from a prescription opioid overdose — a number four times higher than in 1999.
The United States has the highest rate of opioid use in the world, according to background information in the study. The U.S. rate is 88 percent higher than in second-place Germany and seven times higher than in Great Britain.
Nothing is going to get done as long as the GOP controls congress. Billionaires are far more important to them than public health.
