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Pain kills
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Cutting back my patient’s opioids when they were helping, when there is no better alternative, none better – it is the most painful thing I’ve ever been asked to do as a doctor. Withdraw necessary medicine. On orders from the federal government forcing me to harm my patient.
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Harm my patient. The thought sickens. Forced by government orders to harm my patient.
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Orders. Cold as a steel gun held by DEA Swat team bursting into my office if I don’t act on government orders. Certain dictatorships treat citizens that way.
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Congress is pushing this opioid bust very hard.
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That is demagoguery
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I am pained and suspicious in several ways.
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Legal nationwide precedent.
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A precedent in government, deciding for each individual person, without good faith history and examination of each, now orders each person’s medical treatment.
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It overrides judgement. I feel my judgement specializing for decades in pain management, with or without use of opioids, using comprehensive multi-specialty approaches has always chosen excellence in the field of pain management, in accord with State and Federal guidelines until this new one, and within the best practices of the American Pain Society.
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Best practices are irrelevant. Choke on that one. The lack of options is impossible to swallow. It is life-changing for the most severely disabled patients across the country.
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It has nothing to do with the subject: pain control.
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Nothing to do with helping to relieve pain.
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It causes grave harm to my patients and their families and sets an astonishing precedent among healthcare insurers to never allow more than the guidelines; the federal CDC-invented, arbitrary, pseudoscience, one-size-fits-all guideline for opioids because:
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the government can’t deal appropriately with the heroin epidemic and the war on drugs. They ignore results from countries that have done more enlightened research to point the way.
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Demogogues order doctors how to treat everyone. This country is has done what China and Russia have done to their citizens. I am in shock. My patients are in shock. Aghast. Feeling forced to bend over and swallow an undemocratic, unscientific piece of
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This used to be a free country with certain rational sets of behavior and one that recognized a need for pain specialists. Only recently did it create specialists in pain management. Specialists who get ignored. Does this happen in every other field? Shouldn’t we all care no matter our expertise because we may all have bad pain if we live long enough? Chronic noncancer pain. What if some federal agency starts ordering you that dialysis will be allowed less often?
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None of us gets away from the grip of the irreligious opioid guidelines. Will we have intractable pain at some time in our lives? Will we allow government to dictate that you or your spouse or gram cannot be given the dose that has safely helped for years? The guidelines were forced on us.
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Insurance will not pay for more.
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This needs to be discussed as a presidential election debate issue.
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Demagogues appear at times of unrest across the country. Politicians may feel forced to bow to the anti-opioid groups, angry because of the heroin epidemic and at how badly addiction treatment is neglected in this country.
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But for pain patients not addicts, to be subjected to directives from federal agencies, CDC and DEA, how do we object to this unscientific, irrational precedent? At least debate it on a presidential level.
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Drug abuse, addiction, pain management and healthcare insurance as it pertains to these new federal opioid guidelines presume to treat pain but force us all into a cage of irrational pseudoscientific dictates. And we are forced to mangle the finely adjusted treatment of your pain, your spouse or your granny’s pain. We’ve slogged through so much to get there. It’s tough to find the right balance with chronic daily pain.
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Those running for president:
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What is the candidate’s position on this unprecedented fiat that dictates your maximum morphine equivalent daily dose (MEDD) you can receive? It is a dose that is far less than you’ve been on for years that had been helping.
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Is this creating unprecedented pain among 50 million Americans with chronic pain?
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Are we going to let politicians treat our patients with pain?
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This site is not email. Not intended for medical advice.
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This is the start of all sorts of federal dictates
into your medical care.
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