Fwd: Party of Pain
Submitted by PAAMember on January 22, 2006 - 2:03am. :: Discussion
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From: Suzanne Wills <escramble('suzwills','swbell.net');">>
Date: Jan 21, 2006 4:33 PM
Subject: Party of Pain
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Newshawk:
Suzanne Wills
Pubdate: 21 Jan 06
Suzanne Wills
Pubdate: 21 Jan 06
Source:
New York Times
New York Times
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
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<<a pain specialist might have a one-in-three chance
of being investigated for prescribing opioids.>>
of being investigated for prescribing opioids.>>
*****************************************************
January 21, 2006
Op-Ed
Columnist
Party
of Pain
By
JOHN TIERNEY
As
the baby boomers age, more and more Americans will either be enduring chronic
pain or taking care of someone in pain. The Republican Party has been reaching
out to them with a two-step plan:
1. Do not give patients medicine to
ease their pain.
2. If they are in great pain and near death, do not let
them put an end to their misery.
The Republicans have been so determined
to become the Pain Party that they've brushed aside their traditional belief in
states' rights. The Bush administration wants lawyers in Washington and federal
prosecutors with no medical training to tell doctors how to treat
patients.
As attorney general, John Ashcroft decided that Oregon's law
allowing physician-assisted suicide violated the federal Controlled Substances
Act because he didn't consider this use of drugs to be a "legitimate medical
purpose." Karen Tandy, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has been
using this same legal theory to decree how doctors should medicate patients with
pain, and those who disagree with her medical judgment can be sent to
prison.
You know Republicans have lost their bearings when they need a
lesson in states' rights from Janet Reno, who considered the Oregon law when she
was attorney general. For the federal government to decide what constituted
legitimate medicine, she wrote, would wrongly "displace the states as the
primary regulators of the medical profession."
The Supreme Court agreed
with her this week in upholding the Oregon law. In the majority opinion, Justice
Anthony Kennedy said the federal drug law did not empower the attorney general
"to define general standards of medical practice." It merely "bars doctors from
using their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug
dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood."
That's news to the
D.E.A. and the federal prosecutors, who have gone way beyond any "conventionally
understood" idea of drug trafficking. They've been prosecuting doctors for
prescribing painkillers like OxyContin, even where there's no evidence of any of
the drugs being resold on the streets. It doesn't matter that the doctor
genuinely believed that the patient needed the drugs and was not abusing them.
It doesn't matter that the patient was in pain.
No, doctors are now going
to prison merely for prescribing more pain pills than the D.E.A. and prosecutors
deem a "legitimate medical purpose." These drug warriors are not troubled by the
enormous range in the level of pain medication that different patients
need.
They don't even seem to worry much about the potency of the pills,
just the number. They want enough pills of any dosage to make a good photo at a
press conference. In some cases, doctors have been too careless or gullible, but
those are offenses to be disciplined by state medical authorities, not criminal
courts.
Tandy claims that only a few corrupt doctors have anything to
fear from the D.E.A. She responded to a column of mine last year by saying that
her agency had investigated only 0.1 percent of the 600,000 doctors in the U.S.
But she was far too modest. Most doctors, after all, write few if any
prescriptions for opioid painkillers.
The doctors who matter are the
small number of specialists in pain treatment who prescribe opioids. Ronald
Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida,
estimates that 17 percent of those doctors were investigated during one year by
the D.E.A., and an even greater number of others were investigated by local and
state authorities, typically in concert with the drug agency. That means a pain
specialist might have a one-in-three chance of being investigated for
prescribing opioids.
Faced with those odds, doctors are understandably
afraid. As noted in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, the D.E.A.
has made doctors reluctant to give opioids to desperately ill patients, even
when these drugs are the most effective pain treatment. The article warned that
a victory for the Bush administration in the Oregon case, besides affecting
terminally ill patients in Oregon, could cause doctors across the country to
"abandon patients and their families in their moment of greatest
need."
The Supreme Court's decision is a victory for patients and their
doctors - including, I hope, some of the ones in prison for violating the
federal legal theory that has now been rejected by the court. The doctors should
go free, and Republicans in the White House and Congress should restrain the
drug warriors who locked them up. When this year's budget is drawn up, it's the
D.E.A.'s turn to feel pain.
Copyright
2006The New York Times
Company
Op-Ed
Columnist
Party
of Pain
By
JOHN TIERNEY
As
the baby boomers age, more and more Americans will either be enduring chronic
pain or taking care of someone in pain. The Republican Party has been reaching
out to them with a two-step plan:
1. Do not give patients medicine to
ease their pain.
2. If they are in great pain and near death, do not let
them put an end to their misery.
The Republicans have been so determined
to become the Pain Party that they've brushed aside their traditional belief in
states' rights. The Bush administration wants lawyers in Washington and federal
prosecutors with no medical training to tell doctors how to treat
patients.
As attorney general, John Ashcroft decided that Oregon's law
allowing physician-assisted suicide violated the federal Controlled Substances
Act because he didn't consider this use of drugs to be a "legitimate medical
purpose." Karen Tandy, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has been
using this same legal theory to decree how doctors should medicate patients with
pain, and those who disagree with her medical judgment can be sent to
prison.
You know Republicans have lost their bearings when they need a
lesson in states' rights from Janet Reno, who considered the Oregon law when she
was attorney general. For the federal government to decide what constituted
legitimate medicine, she wrote, would wrongly "displace the states as the
primary regulators of the medical profession."
The Supreme Court agreed
with her this week in upholding the Oregon law. In the majority opinion, Justice
Anthony Kennedy said the federal drug law did not empower the attorney general
"to define general standards of medical practice." It merely "bars doctors from
using their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug
dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood."
That's news to the
D.E.A. and the federal prosecutors, who have gone way beyond any "conventionally
understood" idea of drug trafficking. They've been prosecuting doctors for
prescribing painkillers like OxyContin, even where there's no evidence of any of
the drugs being resold on the streets. It doesn't matter that the doctor
genuinely believed that the patient needed the drugs and was not abusing them.
It doesn't matter that the patient was in pain.
No, doctors are now going
to prison merely for prescribing more pain pills than the D.E.A. and prosecutors
deem a "legitimate medical purpose." These drug warriors are not troubled by the
enormous range in the level of pain medication that different patients
need.
They don't even seem to worry much about the potency of the pills,
just the number. They want enough pills of any dosage to make a good photo at a
press conference. In some cases, doctors have been too careless or gullible, but
those are offenses to be disciplined by state medical authorities, not criminal
courts.
Tandy claims that only a few corrupt doctors have anything to
fear from the D.E.A. She responded to a column of mine last year by saying that
her agency had investigated only 0.1 percent of the 600,000 doctors in the U.S.
But she was far too modest. Most doctors, after all, write few if any
prescriptions for opioid painkillers.
The doctors who matter are the
small number of specialists in pain treatment who prescribe opioids. Ronald
Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida,
estimates that 17 percent of those doctors were investigated during one year by
the D.E.A., and an even greater number of others were investigated by local and
state authorities, typically in concert with the drug agency. That means a pain
specialist might have a one-in-three chance of being investigated for
prescribing opioids.
Faced with those odds, doctors are understandably
afraid. As noted in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, the D.E.A.
has made doctors reluctant to give opioids to desperately ill patients, even
when these drugs are the most effective pain treatment. The article warned that
a victory for the Bush administration in the Oregon case, besides affecting
terminally ill patients in Oregon, could cause doctors across the country to
"abandon patients and their families in their moment of greatest
need."
The Supreme Court's decision is a victory for patients and their
doctors - including, I hope, some of the ones in prison for violating the
federal legal theory that has now been rejected by the court. The doctors should
go free, and Republicans in the White House and Congress should restrain the
drug warriors who locked them up. When this year's budget is drawn up, it's the
D.E.A.'s turn to feel pain.
Copyright
2006The New York Times
Company
--
Tammera Halphen
The Democratic Party is a BIG TENT, but there is NO ROOM for those
who advance the agenda of THE RICH (Corporate Owners) at the EXPENSE of LABOR and the POOR.
In EVERY case, "Barriers to Trade" and "Restrictions on Corporations" were created to protect something valuable!
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