Dreamland

The FEHBlog finished reading Sam Quinones' 2015 book Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.  The FEHBlog recommends the prize-winning book to those interested in U.S. healthcare.

Reading the book confirmed for me that while the barn door has been closed on the opioid prescription  crisis (which ran from the mid-1990s when the Food and Drug Administration approved Purdue Pharma's Oxycontin for marketing until a few years ago when doctors, pharmacists, and state regulators restored sanity) and the large-scale heroin crisis (which depended on the opioid prescription crisis to create new customers), there still is a lot to be done to help people who were harmed during that twenty year period.  The author encourages health plan coverage for multi-disciplinary pain clinics for people suffering from chronic pain (other than cancer patients and mortally ill patients with chronic pain for whom opioid based drugs remain appropriate).