Opioid Maker, Insys, Admits To Bribing Doctors To Prescribe Addictive Opiates.

After being found guilty for racketeering conspiracy in court because Insys paid doctors illegally to prescribe opiates, they’re fined a paltry $225 million.

It’s unknown how many multiples of this the company made for their illegal practices.

It’s also not clear how many lives were destroyed by being put on opiates unnecessarily by paying doctors illegally to prescribe them in this case.

The stats on opiate use are shocking. Here’s why we hear so much about the opiod crisis.

• 6% of people taking an opiate for 1 week are still on an opiate 1 year later.
• About 30% that are on an opiate for 30 days are still on opiates in a year.
• Pregnant women are using opiates.
• There was a 5X increase in babies born with with an opiate addiction from 2000 to 2012, with an estimated 21,732 infants were born with addiction in 2012. This was 7 years ago and the numbers are worse now!
• Every 25 Minutes, a baby is born suffering from opiate addiction and withdrawal.
• A 2015 paper in Pain found that in a few days, opiates caused a loss of brain volume.

The opiate crisis is destroying so many people’s lives and killing so many others.

Every single day more than 115 people in the US die after overdosing on opioids – including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a big part of the opiate crisis and was a drug Insys was paying doctors millions of dollars to prescribe to people through their scheme to increase drug sales.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

People most often start on an opiate for musculoskeletal pain, most commonly Back Pain.

No one takes the first opiate with the goal of becoming an addict. It’s just that the medication is so addictive that it happens… and it happens a lot more often than most people believe.

Chiropractic is a clear solution for so many people with pain.

Chiropractic is well known to help so many different types/causes of Back Pain – as well as so many other musculoskeletal and other types of pain.

The problem is that most people see the wrong type of health care provider to treat their pain.

Many people that are put on an opiate could be helped by a chiropractor.

They simply don’t know and their medical doctor probably has no idea either. Most often, they just don’t have enough knowledge about chiropractic care to refer.

A 2018 paper found that the likelihood of filling a prescription for an opioid pain reliever was 55% lower for people that saw a Chiropractor compared with people who did not see a Chiropractor for lower back pain.

This means 55% less people taking an opiate!

When treating pain, it makes sense in the vast majority of cases to start with conservative care first and move to more aggressive options as necessary. At times, it may make sense to take a pain reliever medication AND see a chiropractor.

This may help some people get out of pain quickly with the short term effect of the medication while improving the underlying problem that is causing the pain with Chiropractic Treatment.

The reality is that, unfortunately, most people that could be helped by a chiropractor never think about seeing one.

Unfortunately, their medical doctor or specialist often doesn’t recommend it to them as an option and instead many people are put on an opiate.

Some of these people will become addicted to opiates. Ultimately so of the people addicted to opiates die as a result.

Another problem is that many people end up having surgery for a musculoskeletal problem that could be helped with Chiropractic Care.

This also can lead to increases in opiod use with all the problems associated with them.

Of course millions of Americans DO see and benefit from Chiropractic Care every year, maybe it’s time to schedule an appointment at our Texarkana Clinic so you can join them?

Reference: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/730173846/opioid-maker-insys-admits-to-bribing-doctors-agrees-to-pay-225-million-settlemen