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Is Medicaid worsening the Opiod Crisis? One argument being pushed by a Wisconsin Senator and the WSJ, is that Medicaid, an insurance program that provides low-cost health coverage to some low-income people, families and children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities delivers the pills and therefore is at fault. |
Follow the Money:
- Opiods are a $13-billion-a-year industry for Big Pharma. In 1998 a video was sent to 15,000 primary care doctors by Purdue Pharma, the company that has made $35 billion from the sales of the painkiller Oxycontin. A pain specialist in the video stated that “the rate of addiction among pain patients who are treated by doctors is much less than 1 percent.”
- “Donations” from drug companies to political associations for state attorneys general have risen in the past three years, totaling almost $700,000 to Democrats and $1.7 million to Republicans. The legal contributions mean easier access to the AG’s at exclusive meetings, golf outings and high-end dinners where they can urge them not to sue.
- The black market for bottles of Oxycontin is huge – an investment of $50 or less for a prescription can yield $3,000 on the street.
Is blaming Medicaid really based on the distaste for government programs that transfer money from people that can afford it to those that need help?