I was pretty baffled by this one myself because I have a genetic condition that precludes me taking NSAIDs, but I was also mobility impaired and so disabled I was on welfare, so for the past couple of years I kept waiting for doctors to do something to actually treat me
I have no history of drug addiction or recreational drug use at all. I don't even drink: even if I could afford to, I don't like beer. Also, I was suffering from a lot of fatigue, so I wasn't interested in narcotics. Combine with my actual physical problems, there should have been some screaming headlines in my medical chart for my doctors to actually treat me. Yet I was getting nothing but referrals to acupuncture.
Part of the problem before January was I was on Medi-Cal: I think the only sort of pain reliever I was covered for was a muscle relaxant. The doctor tried prescribing it, and it did nothing for me. Then he just left me to suffer.
My sense is there are a lot of mixed messages in the medical community about prescribing pain relievers. They don't want to prescribe anything you might get addicted to. But this often leaves doctors standing around twiddling their thumbs and giving the "lifestyle speech" while their patient just suffers. In my case the source of the pain was nerve damage: the type of pain reliever I needed wasn't even a narcotic/opioid/whatever! I was probably put through a couple of years of needless suffering while doctors evaluated whether my "pain" required relieving in their estimation or not.
There's something wrong with that. The doctor should diagnose, but they shouldn't get to "opine" on whether pain should be relieved or not. The patient is the customer! Even the poorest patient is the customer because if they are disabled, that patient is a drain on the taxpayer pocket. The duty of the doctor is to get them back on their feet, not to see how much pain meds they can do without.
Just my 2 cents on that.
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