The

Out of Control

Medical Industrial Complex

Opioids could kill nearly half a million people across America over the next decade as the crisis of addiction and overdose accelerates. 

Deaths from opioids have been rising sharply for years, and drug overdoses already kill more Americans under age 50 than anything else. STAT asked leading public health experts at 10 universities to forecast the arc of the epidemic over the next decade. The consensus: It will get worse before it gets better. 

There are now nearly 100 deaths a day from opioids, a swath of destruction that runs from tony New England suburbs to the farm country of California, from the beach towns of Florida to the Appalachian foothills.

If that prediction proves accurate, the death toll over the next decade could top 650,000. That’s almost as many Americans as will die from breast cancer and prostate cancer during that time period. Put another way, opioids could kill nearly as many Americans in a decade as HIV/AIDS has killed since that epidemic began in the early 1980s. The deep cuts to Medicaid now being debated in Congress could add to the desperation by leaving millions of low-income adults without insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

DYI Quick Comment:  Here we go again addressing the symptom and not the cause of America’s overpriced medical system.  As I have stated the Medical Industrial Complex colludes in order to price fix and are now moving to form local and regional monopolies.  If these companies were brought under the Robinson – Pattman, Clayton, and the granddaddy Sherman Anti-Trust Act prices will fall from 20% of our economy to 5%!  That’s not a typo….5%!  The majority of doctor bills would easily be paid out of pocket; including the poor! 

 It’s already so bad that once unthinkable scenes of public overdose are now common: People are dying on public buses and inside fast-food restaurants. They’re collapsing unconscious on street corners and in libraries after overdosing on prescription pain pills, heroin, and fentanyl. A customer in Anchorage, Alaska, hit the floor of a Subway while trying to order a sandwich. A mom in Lawrence, Mass., sprawled in the toy aisle of a Family Dollar as her little girl screamed at her to wake up. A grandmother in East Liverpool, Ohio, slumped in the front seat of an idling car, turning blue, while a toddler in dinosaur pajamas sat in the back. 

There are so many deaths, some coroners are running out of room for bodies.

On this, all the experts agree: Fatal overdoses will not even begin to level off until sometime after 2020, because it will take time to see whether the federal government’s efforts to boost drug enforcement and push doctors to write fewer prescriptions for opioid pain pills are effective. 

DYI:  All drugs should be legalized.  As a Libertarian we’ve battled the temperance movement since the 1970’s only until recently has minor positive movement been achieved regarding marijuana and only within a few States.  Drug wars only make the problem worse.  I’m not going to write about this as I’ve done so over the past 40 years – I’ll let others to the writing and talking….So here are a few links, here, here, and here.

Simply put; The Medical Industrial Complex is TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL.

 Address the real issue  (third link provided above)  For too long policy makers have used prohibition as a smoke screen to avoid addressing the social and economic factors that lead people to use drugs. Most illegal and legal drug use is recreational. 

Poverty and despair are at the root of most problematic drug use and it is only by addressing these underlying causes that we can hope to significantly decrease the number of problematic users.

 DYI