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posted by martyb on Monday September 25 2017, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the addiction-sucks dept.

CVS is finally trying to do something about the opioid epidemic:

Drug-store chain CVS Health announced Thursday that it will limit opioid prescriptions in an effort to combat the epidemic that accounted for 64,000 overdose deaths last year alone.

Amid pressure on pharmacists, doctors, insurers and drug companies to take action, CVS also said it would boost funding for addiction programs, counseling and safe disposal of opioids.

[...] The company's prescription drug management division, CVS Caremark, which provides medications to nearly 90 million people, said it would use its sweeping influence to limit initial opioid prescriptions to seven-day supplies for new patients facing acute ailments.

It will instruct pharmacists to contact doctors when they encounter prescriptions that appear to offer more medication than would be deemed necessary for a patient's recovery. The doctor would be asked to revise it. Pharmacists already reach out to physicians for other reasons, such as when they prescribe medications that aren't covered by a patient's insurance plan.

The plan also involves capping daily dosages and initially requiring patients to get versions of the medications that dispense pain relief for a short period instead of a longer duration.

[...] "The whole effort here is to try to reduce the number of people who are going to end up with some sort of opioid addiction problem," CVS Chief Medical Officer Troyen Brennan said in an interview.

It appears this initiative is limited to initial filling of prescriptions — there is no mention of changes in the handling of refills.


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  • (Score: 1) by Ken on Monday September 25 2017, @05:00PM (6 children)

    by Ken (5985) on Monday September 25 2017, @05:00PM (#572714)

    Is it a certain number of people affected, or a certain percentage of the population. In a very limited fashion I ran some numbers while reading a couple of articles. One was overdose deaths which I divided by U.S. population and came up with .02 percent. The other was opioid prescriptions in one state which I divided by that state's population and came up with 0.25 percent. I wish I could remember the articles. I just wonder if this "epidemic" is as bad as the media would have us believe.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by arcz on Monday September 25 2017, @05:26PM (3 children)

    by arcz (4501) on Monday September 25 2017, @05:26PM (#572720) Journal

    Obviously the opioid epidemic is not nearly as large of a problem as they would have you believe. The war on drugs is a front and justification to preserve the harmful drug licensing system we have in the United States. If drugs were regulated less Big Pharma wouldn't profit as much, can't have that! So the dangers of drugs are over-hyped as an alternative justification for why these laws exist.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:35PM (#572762)

      it's also a war on personal freedom, a way to steal people's property, a way to weasel feds into everything and a way to fill the prison system/modern day slavery with fresh slaves.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:35AM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:35AM (#572861)

      You do realize that before the FDA, it was common for the precursors to modern pharmaceuticals ("patent remedies"), to include opiates and other addictive substances, right? And that there was absolutely no guarantee that what is in the bottle bears any relationship at all with the label on it? Heck, you don't even need to look at what was going on a century ago: Products that purport to be herbal remedy and vitamin pills, which are not regulated by the FDA, have been tested by consumer groups and frequently discovered to not be at all what they claim to be.

      Imagine taking your pills and having no idea if they are remotely what your doctor thinks you should take.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by arcz on Sunday October 08 2017, @08:01PM

        by arcz (4501) on Sunday October 08 2017, @08:01PM (#578949) Journal

        There's a saying, sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
        Just because what companies did before was wrong does not make our current "solution" somehow optimal or just.

  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:02AM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:02AM (#572855)

    How about a comparison with something I think we can agree was a serious epidemic, namely AIDS?

    AIDS has killed roughly 660,000 Americans since it was first encountered in 1981, or about 18,400 people a year on average. Heroin overdose killed about 3.5 times that last year. So yes, I don't think the word is being misused, except for the question of whether heroin addiction is considered a disease.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by arcz on Sunday October 08 2017, @08:03PM

      by arcz (4501) on Sunday October 08 2017, @08:03PM (#578951) Journal

      An epidemic really means just that the rate of new infections is such that it is on an concerning and exponential curve. Drugs can't infect other people, hence they can't be an epidemic.