The 60 Minutes piece on opioids was an eye opener for me

[elias7]

23. My experience has been just the opposite

As a physician, i have never been offered some kind of kick back, vacation, or high value perk for prescribing anything. Most, if not all physicians I have ever worked with strive to avoid prescribing narcotics, unless absolutely necessary. That is the rule, not the exception, which is emphasized he by 60 minutes in a somewhat slanted report.

When you say that one of the first thing they asked you after you woke up from surgery was if you wanted OxyContin, I hear a very pejorative framing of a physician responding to a perceived need. is if your opinion that you would have preferred not being asked about your pain control needs after surgery?

Part of the opiate problem is that some assholes have taken to lacing heroin with fentanyl and carfentanyl, leading to an epidemic of inadvertent overdoses, thus pushing the issue to the forefront. Lawmakers have tried to tie these deaths to the prescribing of narcotics, which is a very complicated issue and not a simple cause and effect.

Opiates kill pain. Physical pain, psychic pain. Like alcohol. Like marijuana. Like any other drug of abuse. Yet, there is a role in treating acute and chronic pain for narcotics. It's commendable that you and your father have such a high tolerance for pain, and I suspect you're not the ones writing those scathing letters to hospital administration about my failure to adequately address your pain needs.

I feel you need to consider all sides of this issue, not rely on an emotional response to a one sided report that seems to support your limited experience. We, whoever we are, have not been instructed to create addicts, have no conspiracy to get kick backs, vacations or other perks that you have already concluded I must be doing.