If you really want to know, I'll talk to you in private. It's something that's very, very personal to me.

I'm not saying it's Obama's fault necessarily (it wouldn't have been in the situation that affected me), but the correlation and unintended consequences Medicaid expansion and opiod addiction is unsurprising if you understand the causes.

That said, the data is there, and it's pretty irrefutable.

Exactly, not surprising that more regulation is needed on what and how big pharma can push.

It's not a problem of regulation, it's a problem of access. And pain management is a tricky, tricky business.

What do you mean by access?

TrickyMac

This isn't exactly true. Those doing the cracking down knew that some subset of that population would move to harder drugs. The predicament they were in was that they needed to stop the flow of people who otherwise wouldn't get hooked on prescription drugs if not for the loose regulations. The problem is to address both the then continuous flow of new people would wouldn't have gotten hooked otherwise by tightening the prescription drugs requirements and the stock of those who would become addicted to harder drugs once the easy supply of prescription pills dried up would require a lot of moving parts and a lot of coordination that simply doesn't exist.

Uh oh. Obama increased treatment funds? GG to those under the trump-vendetta doctrine.

Giving people easier access (including expanding Medicaid) makes them more likely to request prescription pain killers.

Why take an just Ibuprofen when you can go to my doctor and get Tramadol?

Understand as well that pain is subjective. There's no actual measurement for it. You just have to tell your doctor you're in pain and boom, there's your script. Their effectiveness is off the charts, as is there addictive properties.

It's much much worse than you can realize.

I don't really want the personal story that you can't post. I want to know why it's Obama's fault and why it wouldn't have happened under Trump. I'm skeptical that medicaid expansion accounts for any significant part of it, but feel free to post the irrefutable proof.

Regardless, apparently the solution is not having health care? Not for certain classes of people? More stringent government regulation? Regulation for only certain classes of people?

But most people already had health insurance. Obamacare didn't change the country from one in which no one had insurance to one in which everyone does, Obamacare just cut the uninsured rate from like 20% to 10% or whatever the actual numbers are.

So the solution you're proposing here is that we need to do much more than just repeal Obamcare, we need to take away employer-provided health care too. Because otherwise people will have access to health care, which is bad now.

I agree that they didn't have enough resources in place, but they certainly didn't intend for people to move to street drugs. I don't think they anticipated the rise of fentanyl as a street drug either.

Do you know how people are normally able to afford health insurance? By having a good paying job. If Obama had focused on jobs instead of healthcare, he would have resolved both. Do you know what else people who have good jobs and meaningful work in their life are less likely to do - overdose on narcotics. Sure, anecdotally, addiction afflicts everyone, but statistically the poor are disproportionately afflicted.

I already posted the statistics on Medicaid expansion and opiods - the correlation is irrefutable.

Note as well how many people entered the Social Security roll as jobs became scare under Obama -
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/OASDIbenies.html

Yes, the population got older. But notice the disability numbers climbing as well. I'm sure early retirement numbers grew as well.

So, yes, focusing on jobs instead of healthcare is a better policy decision in fighting the opiod epidemic and would be different under a Trump administration.

And the tighter restrictions on pain medications are bad in other ways. I have family members with EDS, which can cause enormous pain with little outward evidence. I've heard of doctors accusing these patients of being drug addicts even when they have a genetic diagnosis. There seems to be a lot more pressure NOT to prescribe opiates than the other way around.

You're so bad at irrefutable proof it just looks like trolling. The numbers essentially go up every year and yes boomers hit social security age AND the rate of growth of disability was MUCH higher under Bush than Obama.

Climate change correlates with medicaid expansion. Thanks a lot, Obama.

When you say MUCH....I'm going to need you to do the legwork on those numbers. I'm not seeing the rate anywhere.

What's your favorite phrase? Citation please?

You do know what correlation means? Nah, of course you don't.

google it, moron, as you like to say

yeah, i wouldn't know a pearson coefficient if it hit me in the ass

6.7M to 9.3M vs 9.3M to 10.6M

It could not jump out at you any more.

End all healthcare now!

Ran the numbers....
It averaged 4% growth under the 3 prior presidents. It averaged 2% growth under Obama. Meh.
(Saying reduced rate of growth by 50% would give your your MUCH I suppose.)

That thing where right wingers don't know the rest of the industrialized world has universal health care will never stop being hilarious.

That thing where ideologues don't realize millions of people come from universal health care systems to the United States every year and pay for surgeries and procedures they cannot get in their home countries or don't want to wait years on waiting lists for, even after paying 50%+ taxes in order to have universal health care. The United States has the best quality health care in the world, and it's expensive.

There are goods and bads to all systems.

. Less than 100k people travel to the US for healthcare, whereas about 750k people travel from the US to somewhere else.

Probably not for Americans, but Iran is one of the biggest healthcare destinations in the world with about 500k per year.

Trump leaked classified info, again. Lock him up!