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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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @11:02PM
Yes, definitely there are no guarantees. Another example is living as healthy as can be (even having perfect knowledge of that, which we are not even close to), but getting in a plane crash, etc. At this point in history (as well as all prior points) you are pretty much guaranteed your body will slowly stop functioning in a myriad of ways at some point as you get older. This is no matter what you do.
In your case, perhaps you contracted some weird virus strain at some point. Maybe it was even something like poison ivy you brushed up against one too many times, we still don't know why that substance is such a problem for some humans (but pretty anything else can eat it with no problem). Maybe you exercised too much without breaks and whatever is going on with delayed onset muscle soreness got to you.
My position is we lack basic info about almost everything regarding the human body (how many cells in each tissue at various ages, etc), so believing that anyone has the expertise to help you is a mistake. All they can do is try out different things and check if you seem to be improving, basically brute force on the acute symptoms while disregarding the long-term effects.
I don't know about this:
Why do you believe they have a handle on your problem now when they had no idea earlier? It is the old counterfactual problem, what would have happened if you didn't get input to the healthcare system? And keep in mind I really do think these concentrated chemicals can be useful tools, like putting some grease on the squeaky wheel in the drier.