Thread by @tal7291

In a million yrs I never thought I would come to a conclusion like this. But after reviewing hundreds of documents, & data elements, it looks like people w/ chronic illnesses are targeted pawns in a shakedown of opioid mfrs by state AGs in collaboration with federal agencies.

In 2017 testimony to the House, CDC personnel told Congress that they lacked evidence of 'what works' and would have to 'build the evidence' to reduce the use of opioids.
#ConfirmationBias

If we build a system to reduce opioid dispensing, opioid dispensing will be reduced. But the impact on patients with chronic illnesses appears to be of no consequence.

Preserving the narrative that use of street acquired opioids are the result of Rxs is critical to opioid litigation. SAEs involving use of illicit opioids has significantly increased since 2016.

Let me say for the umpeenth time that no conclusions about patient safety or population health can be ascertained from reduce doses, pill counts, or days of use. Physician prosecutions, patient abandonment, suicides have increased

But hey, these litigations haven't wound down yet. So willful blindness remains the order of the day.

Who is being defrauded here?
While success is being measured as fraud waste & abuse (FWA) recovery, the deleterious impact on patients, community clinical capacity, & physicians is being ignored by design to support a clear political agenda that has little to do with pubhealth.

Three things can be true at once.
1) Prescription opioids are reducing.
2) The stranding of patients with chronic illnesses is increasing.
3) Harms to community health systems and physicians are increasing.
This isn't how any of this is supposed to work.

MED is a convenient fiction, a myth.
Equinalgesic dosing has to work for EVERYONE, not just for some.

Conversely, if you're a litigation group that needs this narrative to successfully move an enormous wealth transfer from pharm mfrs to state coffers, attorneys, and 'experts,' it's working exactly as designed.
it's a #Grift with patients used as bait.

*cannot be ascertained from reduced dose...*
I hate that this word platform is so unstable...