Feb
7

Lock ’em up!

In the State of the Union address, President Trump said:

“We must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers if we are going to succeed in stopping this scourge,”

There was only a passing reference to treatment, and there’s been no appreciable effort from the White House to expand treatment.

That approach has not and will not work. Period.

Equally troubling, the White House has sidelined professionals in favor of political appointees with little knowledge of or experience in dealing with opioids, the opioid crisis, pain management, or treatment. Politico:

“Among the people working on the public education campaign that Trump promised is Andrew Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani’s 32-year-old son, who is a White House public liaison and has no background in drug policy…”

This is both personal and professional for me.

A family member in law enforcement ran a drug task force in a major city.  He died in the line of duty, leaving a gaping hole that will forever be an unbearable burden.

Our daughter and her husband deal with the opioid crisis every day in their jobs working in Emergency Departments. They see the futility of enforcement-based approaches several times each shift, and it is a crushing burden.

Patients with Substance Abuse Disorder (SAD) will do anything to or for anyone to get their drugs. Prostituting their kids, stealing from parents, abandoning their families…if people will do this, the risk of a jail sentence is NOT going to get them to stop taking opioids.

And the suppliers are making hundreds of millions of dollars every week…Nothing will prevent new ones from replacing any pushers unlucky or stupid enough to get caught.

The problem is both demand and supply.

Supply can be laid directly at the feet of opioid manufacturers and distributors. They lied, they knew they were lying, and they kept lying about the addictive risk of opioids. They convinced prescribers that addiction risk was so low as to be unimportant for patients that “truly had pain.”

Now that they’ve created demand – millions of users, they stand aside, blaming their victims for using the products pharma knew would cause addiction. Unable to obtain prescription opioids, users switch to heroin.

Purdue, Endo, J&J, and other opioid manufacturers created an incredibly “loyal” customer population of patients who will do anything to get their drugs.

We desperately need a major expansion of treatment programs and funding for those programs.

We do NOT need any more dead law enforcement officers, burnt-out first responders, bankrupt governments, profiteering private prison operators, devastated communities and ruined families.

But that’s exactly what we’ll get with a law enforcement approach to opioids.

I am deeply troubled that the President has done nothing to increase treatment, to add funding, to staff the Office of National Drug Control policy with people who have a clue.

The Administration has not appointed a director for ONDCP. A young man with no credentials or experience or demonstrable ability was the Deputy Director of ONDCP. The President’s budget proposed slashing ONDCP funding by 95%, a move that prompted fellow Republicans to promise to fight the cuts.

One example is telling. A program slated for major change is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Initiative, the single most important program focused on fentanyl. According to one expert, moving the program out of ONDCP;

“does not make practical sense. Imagine taking the responsibility of emergency response away from the CDC in the middle of the Ebola emergency. It would never happen,”

What does this mean?

Without a focus on treatment, there is no change.


Feb
5

An anesthesiologist on opioid addiction and treatment

Some doctors are changing the way they talk about and address pain, offering hope that fewer opioid addicts will be created.

And we are starting to learn how to better help those with substance use disorder – a term that better describes those addicted or dependent.

I learned a lot in a recent interview with Faye Jamali MD, a California anesthesiologist who found her brain “hijacked” by opioids.

According to Dr Jamali, It began with a fluke of an accident at a child’s birthday party, in which she broke her wrist. Two surgeries followed. Sidelined and in pain, Dr Jamali turned to painkillers prescribed by her doctor. Feeling increasingly depressed, and with easy access to drugs, Dr. Jamali began to inject herself, rather than heading to the ER. “That’s when my brain got hijacked,” she says, adding that “I knew nothing about addiction.”

After going thru the recovery process, she’s been sober for eight years, and recently left Kaiser Permanente to help other physicians recover. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation. (Note emphases are mine, and I while tried to capture her comments precisely I may have made errors)

MCM – How has pain management changed?

Dr Jamali – Over the last 4-5 years there’s been a big push to limit amount of narcotics prescribed. Before, it was taught that if patient has pain, just give them as much as they want…that’s changed, that isn’t being taught now, we are on the right track now.

[Instead medical students are being taught] multimodal analgesia, NSAIDs, nerve blocks, and to use PT more.

In California there has been a big push to look at pain holistically and change patients’ expectations about discomfort levels. You can help manage it using different medications and medical services.

MCM – Can you talk about specific changes you are seeing with pain management?

Dr Jamali – with pre-emptive analgesia, there’s less post operative pain if you block it first with nerve blocks [before surgery is performed], then keep using nerve blocks to reduce the need for opioids after surgery. We found that that the care type was key to minimize the amount of opioids needed pre- and post- surgery. Patients who have pain in the hospital are much less likely to get up and walk around, so [nerve blocks help patients be] ready for more activity.

Patient acceptance of pain is also important; We have worked to help patients understand about managing pain, by decreasing opioids or [prescribing] no opioids, you feel better because your mind will be clearer and you will recover faster. There are other ways to manage the pain, to get you comfortable enough to do your errands. Lots of positive reactions from patients to this as opposed to the last time they had this.

Patients have been very happy with the nerve blocks and nerve catheters… patients doing a second knee replacement said this [change in pain management] was night and day with them, [they were] more clear headed, more comfortable, could do their PT…We take pain seriously – pain impedes recovery, this different strategy was better for them.

MCM – For those already addicted– what has worked?

Dr Jamali – [The most successful] Programs for recovering physicians are completely holistic, not a 28 day approach, may be 90 days. Physicians in recovery should have a 5 year plan of what you should be doing; weekly group, Medication Assisted Therapy, practice monitors. For the general population it is extremely expensive to go to inpatient treatment.

12 step is the only one that is free, but there is very little data [on success rates] as it is anonymous.,. Basic data indicates [long-term success is] 8-10% [of patients], AA-type programs say it is higher. Patients do it because it is free. In and of itself it isn’t enough. Should be longer, include component of what made this person get into addiction, lot of times there are factors that enabled addiction, in many instances that isn’t covered [by these programs].

Relapse occurs because we aren’t treating the disease…we don’t only treat the first 90 days of diabetes…. It [substance abuse disorder (SAD)] is a medical disease that needs long-term treatment.

We need to think of addiction as a disease and not stigmatize it. As long as there is a stigma we won’t treat it as we do with other diseases. All evidence indicates it is indeed a disease, this is a powerful highjacking of the brain that leads to this behavior.

There should be national or state standards for treating SAD, requiring enough long term treatment…Can’t just lock them up, need to have a plan. There should be a gold standard for what should be offered to patients who are addicted right now. Look at the causes, what is needed to deal with that over the long term.

Public perception is changing, it used to be addicts are bad people, now we see doctors, soccer moms, teenagers who are part of the problem, they can’t get more drugs so are doing heroin.

MCM – What is the role of opioid manufacturers?

We dealing with the intersection of profits and what is best for society. Far too many pills are going to small towns. Incentives are in the wrong place. Free market has a role in many areas, in healthcare it should not be a free market system…Should not be a profit in treating patients with illness. There’s no financial incentive to prevent a disease if they can profit from it.

Key takeaways:

  • Substance Abuse Disorder is a chronic disease
  • We need to stop stigmatizing sufferers
  • Long-term multi-modal treatment is critically important

 

 

 


Feb
1

Big pharma’s “not responsible” for the Opioid Disaster

Opioid manufacturers and distributors are “lobbying up”, spending almost $2.5 million dollars to lobby state Attorneys General over the last three years, likely in an effort to convince them to not sue manufacturers.

These millions allow manufacturers and distributors access to Attorney General meetings, where CBS reported their representatives spoke “on a panel, telling a group that they were not responsible for the opioid crisis, according to several attendees.”

Overa ten years, these distributors and manufacturers sent 21 million pills to a single West Virginia town, a town with a population of 2900 souls.

That’s around 462 tons of pills.

320 pounds of opioids for every person in Williamson, WV.

Two independent pharmacies – just a quarter mile apart – each got more than a million pills a year. The explanation offered by one of the pharmacies – that the pharmacy serves a much bigger area than just the town of Williamson – is beyond ludicrous. The entire county’s population is less than 27,000.

It gets worse…this from Gizmodo…

An investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail found in 2016 that almost 800 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills were distributed throughout the state’s pharmacies from 2007 to 2012—a figure all the more astounding given that the state has only 1.8 million residents. [emphasis added]

That’s more than 400 pills for every man, woman, and child.

BTW, Purdue Pharma has made $35 billion from sales of Oxycontin.

How in the hell can distributors claim they are “not responsible for the opioid crisis” when distributors sent 2 million opioid pills a year to 2 pharmacies in a tiny town?

A new paper from University of Virginia researcher Christopher Rhum discounts many of the factors blamed by some for the huge spike in drug deaths, placing the blame squarely on the supply of opioids. According to The Economist, “The epidemic is caused by access to drugs rather than economic conditions.”

Of note, the owner of one of the Williamson pharmacies was quoted saying: ““All the prescriptions we filled were legal prescriptions written by a licensed provider,”

Tomorrow, an interview with a licensed provider.

Thanks to Liz Carey of WorkersCompensation.com for her story on this.


Jan
15

So much for the “Opioid Crisis”

A 24-year old is acting as chief of staff of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Of course he has no experience, qualifications, or background that qualifies him for this role. And, ts ONDCP has no Director or Chief of Staff, this kid has been one of, if not the, senior executives at the federal agency tasked with addressing the opioid crisis.

Taylor Weyeneth, who happens to be from our town, also submitted a resume to the federal government that exaggerated his “credentials” (he claimed a graduate degree he does not have).

According to newspaper reports, he was involved with a “family company” here that federal records show was “secretly processing illegal steroids from China as part of a conspiracy involving people from Virginia, California and elsewhere.” Weyeneth’s resume claims he was head of production for this company when he was 16.

Weyeneth is the symptom, the Administration’s complete lack of attention to the opioid crisis is the problem.

This personnel debacle follows the Administration’s attempt to appoint Tom Marino as Director of ONDCP. Marino is a politician that sponsored a bill greatly limiting federal oversight of the opioid industry. an attempt that fortunately collapsed amidst bi-partisan outrage.

Seven Administration appointees have left the Office over the last year; that’s more than 10 percent turnover in the 65 person office. There is no Director in place, and no indication there are any plans to appoint one.

The President gives speeches about the crisis, and claims the Administration is doing everything possible to attack the drug crisis – and Taylor Weyeneth is appointed Deputy Chief of Staff.

Words are one thing, actions another.

What does this mean for you?

We aren’t going to get any help from the White House on opioids.

 


Jan
3

The greatest health “system” in the world

Is responsible for a two-year decline in life expectancy.

Make no mistake, the profit motive embedded in the US healthcare system is directly responsible for an unprecedented drop in life expectancy; opioid manufacturers’ and distributors’ focus on profits coupled with lax governmental oversight led to the opioid disaster.

So, 42,000 of your kids, neighbors, friends, relatives, co-workers died from opioids last year.

But fear not, the addiction treatment industry is riding to the rescue.  Funded by your insurance premiums and tax dollars, a plethora of “treatment” centers are popping up.  While some are excellent, many are nothing more than “treatment mills”, operations set up to suck as many dollars as possible from patients, taxpayers and insurers. Once the dollars run out, the patients are kicked to the curb.

Here’s one example…

The schemes are many, with treatment mills paying body brokers to recruit addicts, false addresses to ensure insurance coverage, fake credentials for “clinicians” and huge bills for non-existent services.

The next time some uninformed individual starts babbling about the exceptionalism of the American healthcare “system”, stick this under his/her nose – we’re exceptional at creating addicts, killing people, lowering life expectancy, crushing souls, while making huge profits for investors legitimate and not.

What’s the solution? 

We pay more for healthcare than anyone else in the world, dollars that are diverted from education, job creation, infrastructure. Many of these dollars are well spent, but the opioid treadmill is just one example of waste and fraud.

A good start would be to much more aggressively prosecute the opioid shills and their buddies in the “treatment” business.  Long and hard jail time for the executives and investors would help prevent the next disaster, but the $209 million in lobbying dollars spent last year by the pharma and device industry makes that unlikely at best.

You get the government you deserve, and you deserve to get it good and hard. HL Mencken.

 

 


Nov
30

Comp is getting it done on opioids.

Work comp drug costs are down 22% over the last five years.  Opioid spend dropped 16.7% last year.

That’s the key takeaway from CompPharma’s annual survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers’ Comp.

These are truly remarkable results; payers and PBMs (mostly PBMs) have slashed over a billion dollars from pharmacy spend, cutting costs for employers and taxpayers.

There is much left to do; far too many patients still get far too many drugs. Opioid addiction is a crisis in workers’ comp, as is abuse misuse and diversion. There are still no comprehensive, completely (or even mostly) effective tools/medications/programs to help patients get off and stay off opioids.

But let’s focus on the positive. Last year, overall opioid spend in the US declined by 1 percent – while work comp cut opioid spend by almost 17 percent.

While the reduction is beyond substantial, it’s important to understand that a big chunk of this was driven by payers settling older claims, claims that have a disproportionately high drug spend. These settlements don’t “count” towards drug spend, while they do eliminate on-going dispensing and the attendant costs.

What does this mean for you?

Well done.

 


Nov
27

Purdue Pharma’s attempting to settle all state claims

Things must be getting tense in Stamford CT, headquarters of Purdue Pharma.  Reports indicate Purdue is working on a deal to resolve all state claims related to opioids.  

Remember – Oxycontin revenues to date are $31 billion and counting. 

Reports indicate Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, have a net worth of around $14 billion.

Here’s what we’ve read so far about the legal situation:

A couple of factoids to remind us of the cause and effect of Purdue’s strategy.

So, what does this mean?

For workers’ comp payers, it is time to get together and develop a legal strategy and approach to suing opioid marketers. The human and financial damage caused by Purdue, Endo and their ilk is incalculable and continuing to grow. Without a successful legal action, employers and taxpayers will be footing the bills for decades to come.

There’s a deeper and even more troubling aspect to this.  One could argue – and with a lot of supporting data – that pharma companies figured out a way to legally addict people and get their insurance companies to pay for their drugs. 

There is no more damning indictment of the profit motive in the US healthcare system.

What does this mean for you?

Time to get moving.

 

 

 


Oct
16

Run like hell…

Shockingly, compound drug fraudsters allegedly lied when they sold accounts receivable to investors.

Who’da thunk it?

Thanks to Greg Jones for his excellent investigative reporting on this; Greg reports today that:

Exhibits filed in the lawsuit by Shadow Tree Investment against Praxsyn Corp. reveals connections to three providers accused of accepting kickbacks from other compounding pharmacies. Praxsyn owns Mesa Pharmacy in Irvine, California.

Mesa was partnering with three providers who now face criminal charges for accepting kickbacks to prescribe compound drugs to injured workers.

The basis for the case appears to be Praxsyn allegedly didn’t tell Shadow Tree about pertinent details about the A/R deal…details such as the accusations about the source of the bills, the alleged nefarious activities of some of the parties involved, and relevant lien settlement information.

I was peripherally involved in something similar to this, when a compounding company was trying to sell its receivables a couple of potential buyers called me for my opinions.

Which, briefly summarized, were “run like hell.”

What does this mean for you?

That remains good advice for anyone approached by compounders, physician prescribing companies, and so-called “revenue cycle management firms” doing most of their work in these areas.

 


Sep
22

Opioids responsible for a fifth of the decline in male workforce

That’s a conclusion, albeit one with caveats, of a just-released study by Princeton University’s Alan Krueger PhD.

Here’s Dr Krueger’s key takeaway, with emphasis added:

about half of prime age men who are not in the labor force (NLF) may have a serious health condition that is a barrier to work. Nearly half of prime age NLF men take pain medication on a daily basis, and in nearly two-thirds of these cases they take prescription pain medication.

Labor force participation has fallen more in areas where relatively more opioid pain medication is prescribed, causing the problem of depressed labor force participation and the opioid crisis to become intertwined.

Implications abound.

For workers comp – despite unprecedented drops in opioid prescriptions for work comp patients, there remains a large population of patients addicted to/dependent on opioids. Moving this population away from opioids will require diverse, creative, and likely expensive services, patience, and persistence.

For the economy – a double whammy of non-productive people means they aren’t generating tax and revenues while consuming lots of resources in the form of aid, government funds, healthcare services, and family income.

For health plans, especially those serving the indigent, a very expensive, and very tough to manage population will increase Medicaid costs significantly.

For opioid manufacturers, shiploads of cash.


Sep
7

Thursday catch-up

Genex acquires Prium…

Good move by Genex, as Prium’s portfolio of services including physician review and pharmacy management ties in well to Genex’ current offerings. I’m a big fan of Prium CEO Michael Gavin – he’s one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and measured people in our business…good news is he’s sticking around.

Kentucky’s making big progress on opioids

Thanks to WCRI’s Vennela Thumula PharmD for her study on how new legislation (HB-1) helped to reduce the number of new work comp patients receiving opioids.

The legislation required prescribers to check the Prescription Drug Monitoring database prior to prescribing opioids, limited opioid prescriptions, and implemented mandatory educational and patient treatment practices.

Key Takeaways

HB-1 immediately reduced opioids prescribed to patients in the first 12 months after the date of injury.

Both the percentage of patients receiving opioids and the amount of opioids decreased by more than 15 percentage points.

Major surgical patients weren’t significantly affected by HB-1; not much change in prescribing to these folks.

Patients with back sprains and similar diagnoses had far fewer opioid scripts.

Thanks to Andrew Kenneally, Communications Director of WCRI, for the head’s up…

Opioid marketing practices

Kudos to Sen Claire McCaskill, D MO, for publicizing opioid manufacturer Insys’ alleged efforts to get approval for fentanyl product Subsys through misrepresentation. McCaskill’s report included an:

audio recording of conversations between an Insys employee and pharmacy benefit manager representatives related to a Subsys prescription for Sarah Fuller, who later died from an alleged fentanyl overdose. This recording suggests the Insys employee in question repeatedly misled Envision Pharmaceutical Services to obtain approval for Ms. Fuller’s Subsys treatment—heavily implying she was employed by the prescribing physician and misrepresenting the type of pain the patient was experiencing.

Sarah Fuller

This follows other reports of Subsys’ unethical and potentially illegal marketing practices, where other Subsys reps said they called payers, saying they were from doctors’ offices and were seeking approval for the drug.

Hell is too cold for these people. 

Finally, a very revealing piece in HealthAffairs provides more insight into just how powerful big healthplans are:

insurers with market shares of 15 percent or more (average: 24.5 percent)…negotiated prices for office visits that were 21 percent lower than prices negotiated by insurers with shares of less than 5 percent.

Differences in providers’ and insurers’ bargaining power are a major contributor to variation in commercial health care prices

Workers’ comp folks – you’re lucky if a generalist work comp PPO’s market share at a practice is 3 percent…

Back out onto the campaign trail!