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Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

It’s because people lie for many reasons.

So? The first response should always be to take folks seriously. Always. Even if they are really searching for opioids. No doctor should assume folks are lying upfront.

Even if that means that a couple people are getting off work when they don't need it. And I'd much rather have a disability system that occasionally gives the wrong people benefits than to withhold benefits from someone and make their life torturous. Much like theft an loss are costs of retail, this should be the cost of a disability system: A few folks take advantage.

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Spitballing, but maybe the problem is that no doctors wants to be the guy in town who's the most generous with opioid prescriptions, as then he'll get swamped by people seeking opioids?

People who look at the statistics after that, finding our doctor prescribing a significant amount of all opioids in the community, are liable to think that he's some sort of unscrupulous stooge of a pharmaceutical company.

That'd cause a race to the bottom of pain medication skepticism. To fix that you'd need some sort of liability reform (as just changing guidelines will never work if it's opposed to a self-sustaining incentive gradient), though I'm not sure what that would actually entail.

It's because of the chilling effect of lawsuits and the risk of losing their DEA license that doctors in the United States are skeptical of issuing pain medication. Americans with genuine pain problems that cannot be effectively treated by local doctors despite persistent good-faith efforts should instead find a doctor in a Mexican border town where pain medication is more readily available.

Wasn't the problem with opioids in the US that doctors already did prescribe them too freely? The fact that there's now a backlash after it caused a massive problem cannot be the reason that doctors have historically been sceptical about pain (and not just in the US but elsewhere where prescription opioid abuse has not been a problem!)

Spitballing, but maybe the problem is that no doctors wants to be the guy in town who's the most generous with opioid prescriptions, as then he'll get swamped by people seeking opioids?

Nope. In a well-designed system, this just be minimal. Design a better system with better access to medical records throughout the system, lesser liability (the US, mostly), and paid medical leave so that people can actually heal. The alternative is simply that we leave folks in different levels of pain. Heck, even just being able to see prescriptions nationally would be a bonus (Right now, in Norway, when I get an electronic prescription, I can go to any pharmacy to fill it and they can see my prescription history) Innocent people shouldn't have to go to the black market for pain relief because they can't get things figured out legally.

Again, I firmly believe that the first response should always be to believe the patient.

Was being given opioids for chronic pain (nerve pain from autoimmune). but not consistently, so I'd often run out.

I was constantly pushing doctors to try alternate treatments so I can deal with actual issue rather then take pain meds. They had no interest. Took me 3 years to finally get a prescription to LDN, which finally worked for me.

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