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Originally Posted by wil318466
I believe jiggy is correct about the fentanyl is correct. From what I understand it's fentanyl that's doing this massive spike in deaths. The chart showing flat opioids doesn't mean dick.
13ball and disgunbguds comments were lol
You don't understand the argument.
Jiggy argues that overdose deaths have increased because medicaid was expanded and more people got prescriptions for opiates because doctors are afraid to say no (because hospitals might lose funding.) If that were true, then you would see an increase in overdoses of commonly prescribed opioids. You don't.
The increases come partly from fentanyl. It makes zero sense that doctors would be reluctantly prescribing fentanyl to patients who they think might be drug-seeking. For one thing, most fentanyl prescriptions are for patches, which are less likely to lead to overdose and abuse. There are other forms of fentanyl,
but:
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Prescriptions of other forms of fentanyl, including tablets, nasal sprays and lozenges, can only be written by specially licensed physicians and filled at specific pharmacies that participate in a Food and Drug Administration program to promote safer use of high-risk medications.
If that weren't enough,
there apparently hasn't been an increase in fentanyl prescriptions:
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Recent state reports have indicated that increases in synthetic opioid-involved deaths have been associated with the number of drug products obtained by law enforcement testing positive for fentanyl but not fentanyl prescribing rates. These reports indicate that increases in synthetic opioid-involved deaths are being driven by increases in fentanyl-involved overdose deaths, which are likely due to illicitly-manufactured fentanyl.
And if you look at the map included in that source there were 15 states listed with a statistically significant increase in synthetic opioid overdoses between 2014-2015. 8 of those states expanded Medicaid and 7 did not. There isn't even a correlation.
And finally, another large chunk of overdose deaths come from heroin. Doctors are not prescribing heroin.
Jiggy's claims are, as usual, utter nonsense completely unsupported by the facts.