Alicia when I moved to a different state, until I found a new doctor, my old doctor continued to see me through tele-health appointments, then sent my prescriptions to my regular pharmacy. I had my daughter pick them up and mail them to me (or you could use a mail order pharmacy in your home state). Since the law in PA was that you only had to be seen in person every three months, that gave me three months to find a new doctor.
The pharmacists in your new state are right, it would be illegal to fill rx from another state!
Honestly, a chronic pain patient needs to be VERY prepared before moving! Get all your records (I had my pharmacy print out FIVE years of my rx’s history to take with me!), arrange with your old doctor to help you until you get a new one, and even time your move when you first fill your script! Dont put yourself in a situation where you are in a new state, with no meds and no doctor. You will get much farther being viewed as a responsible patient taking an active role in managing your healthcare.
Carla you are obviously not a pain patient. There may be alternative treatments that help SOME people with SOME pain, but for severe, chronic pain, sometimes medication is the only thing to give proper relief! Even before the current opioid situation, most doctors did NOT give opioids out “like candy”! I have had surgeries and disease since I was 12 years old, and even way back then, it was hard to get most doctors to order proper pain relief. Some doctors did get rx happy, but it’s untrue that all were.
Also, the opioid induced rebound pain is not as common as you make out. It’s also very easy to determine if it is in fact occurring. Pain is pain, there should not be one standard for cancer and another for kidney disease or rheumatoid arthritis! Why would that be ok?? Your comment sounds like you are regurgitating things you have read or opinions you have heard. Talk to some real pain patients, work on your compassion, be better! Oh and btw, even if patients did want to explore other means of pain reduction than medication (and most of us DO use other means, either in addition to, or before asking for pain meds!), but the vast majority of them are not covered by insurance and are expensive!
You are so wrong on this it’s ridiculous! They don’t cause more harm than good, and most chronic pain patients do well on them! I have good pain relief and have been on the same dose for 12+ years!
Hitler caused gross genocide of the Jewish people. Kolodny is causing gross genocide of the chronic pain people.
I ask whoever has the power to make these bills, to consider this- one day you or one of your loved ones will have an injury, car accident, surgery, broken bones, chronic pain condition, disease,
and then you will be told to take tylenol.
Absolutely!!!
I am 61. I have been a CPP for 15 years. Ihave seen the doctor/patient relationship become toxic. Not because of the doctor or the patient but because of the hysteria and lack of trust the DEA and CDC has implemented on health care.
This government over reach almost killed me. In PM my drug test came back a false positive and my doctor appruptly refused to fill my medication i have been on for 15 years until a repeat blood test came back clean. Iwas so upset i went and paid 480 for a hair folicle test which is the most accurate to " prove my innocence " yet both the doctors office test and my hair folicle test at the independent lab could take up to 2 weeks to come back. My doctor is so afraid of the DEA that i was told " if you have problems go to ER". I dont have BP problems but when the pain was so intense because i had no pain relief , my BP went to 232/158 so yes my daughter got me to the hospital. I was given a small dose of morphine and my BP came right down because the horrible pain eased off. Finally the next day my drug screen came back clean as i knew it would because the false positive was just that a false positive. My hair folicle showed my prescribed medication , the antibiotics i was on in October and nothing non prescribed nor illegal. Of course i knew it would. My point is this draconian government interference into health care is killing people. It is costing Medicare millions in non fda epidural injections that are dangerous and not approved for chronic pain. Wonder where Medicare funds go? Try 7k for what a 150$ office visit and a 35% prescription will fix. Yet in PM many doctors will not give an medication unless you allow these injections.
This madness and discrimination and torture needs to stop. It is inhumane and itis costing Medicare millions for unnecessary injections.
I am glad to read such a well- thought out and articulated proposal. It is probably outside the scope of the proposal, but there is another big branch of the problem (in my understanding) that is tied to the reckless abuse of our civil court system. Pharmacies all began to tell me that they were unable to even get the medications to fill my prescriptions anymore, which prompted me to do a bit of research into what was happening to our health-care system. It turns out that every major chain of pharmacies, wholesale distributors, and even manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson have been the victims of an avalanche of frivolous lawsuits, aimed at blaming the opioid crisis on them for making medications for pain available. There have been so many that these companies have found it less expensive to settle than to defend themselves. The consolidation of lawsuits is called “The Global Opioid Settlement”. The result has been a contraction in the availability of medications. I don’t know what can be done, other than for this story to start getting printed so the public knows. Thus far, the media has helped conflate the fentanyl crisis with prescription narcotics in the public’s mind, and the lack of distinction has hurt everybody!
Hopefully the pharmacies will get attorneys with some guts to fight. Yes we are charged too much for many medications. Yet where would we be without the research and the manufacturing of pharmaceutical products? During the last pandemic we had medications to save lives. If anyone goes to a doctor and falsely represents themselves to get pain medication then ALL responsibility and consequences of taking that medication is on that patient for lying to their doctor. Its not the drug company its not the doctor. This global lawsuit is the biggest shake down for money that there has ever been. Funds are supposed to go to addiction services? So legal drug manufacturers are supposed to pay for the addiction caused by the illegal drug cartel? Communities complaining of needles littering their streets. When did big pharma start manufacturing heroine or meth or cocaine? They dont. Just this week a drug bust of over 1200 TONS of cocaine and heroine and Fentanyl was seized on the way to Australia on a submarine. Yet our DEA goes after doctors that treat legitimate medical conditions. You never hear that the courts have ruled that prescription opioids were never the cause of the overdose crisis. Yet they did rule that. Hopefully change will happen and CPP will not be forced to suffer because they have chronic pain and need pain medications.
Texas
This is so stupid. Why do they always prescribe these? I had to see a speech therapist because of these types of medications all for it to not provide any relief for my pain. If the meds are for depression and epilepsy, they should not be used to control pain.
My wife has eight herniated discs stemming from a car accident sustained 25 years ago, while she was eight months pregnant with our son. 6 years ago, the end of her right femur broke off from the years of favoring her left side due to those discs.
I work in healthcare, arguably at the forefront of the opioid crisis. I see details on those who have fallen into the abyss.
Then I see my wife who needs this medication - appropriate medication - to function. She doesn’t abuse it - in contrast, she ensures she has what she needs to live her life. To be able to work. To be part of our kids’ lives.
Against that, I see the increasingly frustrating and impossible hoops she has to jump through to get her legally prescribed medication. We have repeatedly paid out of pocket when insurance balked. Why may I ask does the insurance company override the prescribing provider? They do not know the patient better.
Concluding, let’s get smart and stop punishing those who truly need these medications.
I am so sorry
Thank you so much for this! I’ve been treated so badly by emergency room drs just because they see I’m on pain meds. An ER dr refused to see me one time because he assumed I was there for pain meds, but I wasn’t. I actually had a fractured rib and just wanted to make sure nothing else was wrong because the pain had gotten so bad. He told me to go see the dr who prescribes me the meds. I told him I didn’t need meds and he said so what are you here for? I said I don’t know, maybe another xray? You’re the dr! Anyway, we really need to fix this problem because there are so many of us with chronic pain illnesses who are just looked at like drug addicts and it’s bad enough that we are sick. We don’t need this treatment on top of that 
Texas. The NP and PA can not write
For schedule 2 meds which is hydrocodone, oxy, morphine etc. even adderrall and Ritalin
Correct! If you look at addicts, how long do they use with no increased need to take more? 3yrs? 5yrs, 10? People with chronic pain do not chase a high. They just want the pain to be manageable.
We know that it will never go away completely. But a person can not stay alive with pain at a level 10 that never stops. Can you even wrap your mind around having pain at a level 5 that is there day and night, minute by minute , second by second, that never ends? We, the chronic pain community, arent looking for shangri-la, we just want to be able to read an article, talk on the phone, and be able to work at our jobs for as long as possible.
Someone with chronic pain will not abuse their only hope of functioing. Pain medicine, in this population, is not abused because being without it is real, tangible, torture.
I have had to take pain medication for 4o yrs. I am now 58yrs old. I have a Masters degree, and was able to work much lomger than I would have, if not for medical intervenntion and being able to take the appropriare medication therapy.
I am the face of a chronic pain sufferer. Was it the face you expected to see?
Whenever I have treated long-term opioid users, I have found that they have become hyper sensitive to even the slightest discomfort.
The use of these energy-sucking drugs has created a new class of patients that are no longer concerned with healing, but only on their next prescription being filled.
I’m not sure it is useful to differentiate “addicts” and “pain patients”.
many so called “addicts” just do their best to self medicate pain - physical pain, or psychological pein, or both.
many of them lead regular lives and manage their drug or addictive behaviour well in order to be a more or less functional member of society.
every one who consumes regularly a substance that modifies sensations has his or her reasons for it.
Politics should allow every one to find relief, if necessary.
the bulk of research should go how to avoid chronic pain, and find ways to heal chronic pain, though.
I have had New Daily Persistent Headache (NDPH) for 33 years and opioids were the last option. I got tired of all the hassle of using schedule II so I found a schedule III that worked almost as well but had caused me dental damage. I changed doctors because my PMR no longer wants to do pain management and only wants patients to do “procedures” on because he’s sick of this system and I can’t really blame him. He used to prescribe a small amount of oxycodone for spikes but the new doctor, despite speaking with my referring physician and lying to my face about being comfortable with my pain management plan, now refuses to see me at ANY of the WEEKLY REQUIRED APPTS and forces me to see his nurse who inevitably has to ask him questions about everything. So what is the point? He cut my schedule III meds by 75% (and I was only taking a small amount) and refuses to give me ANYTHING for spikes. How is this medicine? How is it humane? I am trying to go back to work because disability isn’t enough to survive and I can’t work if I am in constant under medicated pain. I’m sick of being treated like a criminal when I did nothing wrong. I’ve never used anything other than meds prescribed by my doctor and exactly followed their instructions. But it seems no matter what I do, I can’t find a doctor who will properly care for me. I’m getting to a point where I can’t imagine going on living this way. I have NDPH and can’t hear one more doctor say “we don’t treat headaches with opioids.” If it was “just a headache” it wouldn’t have taken over 8 years to get a proper diagnosis and 18 years before I was ever prescribed an opioid. I have been to every specialist, tried every other med, and done every alternative therapy I know of and I am allergic to cannabis. So my options are virtually nothing. How is it that I live in the US but am treated like I’m in a third world? How come Medicare doesn’t cover ANY meds? I even got an advantage program and they still don’t cover any pain medicine. Why do they cover oxycodone but not buprenorphine?
I feel your comment all the way down in my soul. I pray someone will listen and help us out.