Once you are labeled as a drug abuser, good luck getting any medication even for a legitimate cause.
We are coming full circle to 25 yrs ago, when cancer patients used to die in pain because doctors wouldn't prescribe medication to keep them comfortable.
Now even patients with severe conditions, that a few years ago would have no problem getting meds, are being given more of the anti-narcotic meds like anti-epileptics, anti-depressants and other psychiatric meds for pain, or must go through a long painful process of trying new med after new med to 'prove' you need a certain med. Anything to avoid even a bit of codeine. They'd rather give you 5 different pills (that have serious short & long-term side effects or maybe unknown long-term effects, or don't work for your symptoms) than to prescribe one narcotic. The docs keep count of how many of which meds they prescribe, too. ( That would mean total scripts, not patients, are the final outcome sometimes or make decision what to prescribe ????)
There is governmental pressure on US doctors not to prescribe certain medications and use other 'suggested' meds instead. Insurance sometimes, too.
Not what's best for the patient, or sometimes what the doctor even feels is indicated, but what insurance wants to pay for or what draws less heat from the government. Must not forget BigPharma, too, with 'incentives' it offers doctors to prescribe new expensive medications, not cheaper ones without a patent anymore.
About 3 yrs ago the government invaded a county mental health care center (long-standing) near where I was born. They told all the psychiatrists there to discontinue Xanax on ALL patients and replace it with Klonopin for everyone. The govt told these psychiatrists they would shut the clinic down if medications changes weren't prescribed as they dictated. They expressed the opinion that too many patients at the clinic were receiving Xanax. (This involved several different psychiatrists, not one.)
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So, non-physicians in govt positions prescribing for patients they didn't even know or bother to investigate if this would have negative effects on anyone?
That was BEFORE the new healthcare bill set up non-medical boards to make decisions for other medical issues.
Look at the European countries and you'll know what to expect here. I remember when people from Canada and other countries came here for healthcare because of their country's healthcare (long waits etc) Now where will people go, when no country has a decent healthcare system?
