The Opium for the Poor Is – Opium. Providers in States with Low Income Prescribe High Levels of Opiates

Eugen G Tarnow  August 26 2016 11:00:10 AM

By Eugen Tarnow, Ph.D.
Avalon Business Systems, Inc.
http://AvalonAnalytics.com

The current opiate epidemic has many reasons: pharmaceutical marketing, naïve and/or unscrupulous doctors, availability of cheap and cleverly sold Mexican heroin and inappropriate policy changes to encourage the idea that pain was something curable with drugs that were not addictive (Quinones, 2015).

I find that another reason is lax supervision of Medicare providers.  I find that the Medicare opioid claims per Medicare recipient varies strongly by state.  It should not.  Medicare should have caught that but did not.  

Interestingly the states with the largest number of claims are the poorest - with 51% of the variance coming from the median household income.


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