When people talk about the issues with health care, there’s a lot to discuss. The lack of it, how expensive it is, how hard is to find the right one, and so on.
But there is another issue that most people are oblivious about.
Because specialists for health issues, like orthopedics and physical therapists, are so expensive, most health insurance companies aren’t willing to pay for the cost.
As a result, many doctors don’t bother with recommendations to go to one. Instead, they sign a prescription for drugs to help with pain and discomfort.
This is wrong for many reasons, but most importantly because it’s a direct cause to drug addiction and the opioid crisis.
Many of the drugs related to the opioid crisis, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, are prescribed by doctors.
Usually they’re prescribed for things that can easily be treated without the drugs, such as post-operation pain.
Both doctors and drug companies have been put at fault for this issue.
As a solution the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a guideline for doctors to follow when prescribing opioids.
This includes prescribing the lowest doses possible and looking at the pros and cons first.
Every state has implemented different levels of prescription drug monitoring.
Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that a new task force that would target drug manufacturers and distributors had been created.
That same week, anti-drug bills were introduced in the House of Representatives.
Alex Azar, the secretary for Health and Human Services has also expressed support of medically assisted drug treatment, which is using medication and therapy to treat drug abuse.
But despite all this hard work, opiate issues still persist, and they probably will for a long time.
That is because the real cause of the issue is health insurance companies.
Health insurance companies are the ones who are tying the hands of doctors and drug manufacturers.
They’re the ones forcing them to continue prescribing and selling these harmful drugs because they’re the ones who make it impossible for patients to pay for other types of treatment.
“So many different tactics have been implemented, but none of them have worked,” sophomore Megan Le said. “It’s obvious that the next step should be trying to get insurances to change things.”
In order to eliminate the opioid crisis once and for all, the logical thing for the government to do is to get health insurances to work with them.