Don’t Let the Media and Medical Profession Fool You

By Richard Oberg, MD, Guest Columnist

Chronic pain patients, like my wife, myself and others with abominable mistreatment, continue to lose the care they need while nothing is being done to address the real issues.

Drug abuse is up, young people are dying and the main culprits aren't prescription drugs, but something much more difficult to control. Heroin and illicit fentanyl, major causes of the increasing deaths, are becoming more widely available and, unfortunately, both of them are opioids.

The media routinely spouts about these “opioid deaths” while implying that prescription pain medication is what caused healthy people to take these illegal drugs. Why? Because they say so, that's why.

As with the recent 60 Minutes nonsense, they embellish the death of some high school quarterback, have a room full of grieving parents who say they had no idea their kids were drug addicts, add the fear that this can happen to you, and we the patients get to bear the brunt of this misdirected insanity.

The CDC addictionologist lobby and other federal agencies seem to have hoodwinked everyone into blaming chronic pain patients for this national problem. This is obvious and evident from countless stories of patient abuse no one seems to want to hear. The word is “scapegoat” and not a single person in power is responsible for anything – only we the patients are.

The CDC, government agencies and, quite frankly, the majority of physicians are NOT well-intended on this issue. They created this patient crisis that could have been avoided.

Don't let the medical profession that I was a part of for nearly four decades fool you. Physician sub-specialty organizations now exist for the benefit of physicians, not patients, and are mostly about maintaining control and money. Had these organizations stood up to defend patients against the CDC, and the ridiculous addictionology cohort of psychiatrists and anesthesiologists grooming their financial turf, we wouldn't be here right now. But they didn't, and a majority of physicians say they actually support the guidelines.

Don't buy the “they made me do it” line. It is misdirected nonsense, just as eliminating the pain scale to prevent any accountability is. Physicians don’t like accountability.

Inevitably, doctors still willing to write prescriptions for pain meds will attract greater numbers of chronic pain patients – and become easy prey for the DEA or their physician colleagues who don’t approve. Some of these doctors will become outliers in medical associations whose members tell them to stop because they don’t want to see or treat patients like us.

Why doesn't anyone ask where all the patients of physician practices that are being shut down go to? It's because no one in power cares, that's why. And then there’s the sheer ignorance or bigotry of many physicians who profess to be “pain management experts.”

The American Medical Association (AMA) once represented 75% of all licensed physicians and supported the best care for patients. 

Today, membership in the AMA has declined to just 15-20% of physicians, as subspecialty organizations gained power and patient care became driven by those isolated subspecialties. 

These organizations support the flow of wealth to their specialties better than the AMA ever could.  With increasing specialization, patient care became highly fragmented for those with complex diseases, yet there was no attempt or incentive to coordinate care. It became every patient for himself.

It is extremely rare to non-existent for a physician specialist to actually speak to another physician about your care, nor is much if any time spent reading another doctor’s evaluations. It’s just not fiscally expedient with current healthcare models. That is why you’re “re-evaluated” by every new specialist you see and have to reprove your illness over and over, often to skeptical stares.

The major problem with this is that subspecialties often “evaluate” you beyond their competence. For example, a rheumatologist is vastly superior to a psychiatrist if you have an autoimmune disease, but if you’re depressed and miserable because of an undiagnosed autoimmune disease and enter the care of a psychiatrist, the odds of ever getting an appropriate diagnosis are nil. Worse, they can make your life hell.

It’s just not what they do -- they make you fit their model – not the other way around. Whenever you get into the care of some subspecialist unlikely to have any idea what’s wrong with you, it inevitably leads to biases against you because physicians are just as bigoted about what they don’t understand as anyone else.

The attitude of most that my wife and I have encountered (despite both of us being physicians) suggests that most subspecialists get their information from the nightly news rather than medical journals outside of their specialty. Neurosurgeons think opioids are bad because that’s what they’ve heard. And they’d rather believe that than have you tell them otherwise.

From our point of view, it’s would almost be comical if it wasn't so infuriating.

Often, chronic pain patients are not sick enough to warrant hospital care (following acute care protocols), yet are too ill to be seen by outpatient physicians who aren’t reimbursed enough to spend additional time figuring you out or interacting with your other physicians.

And there are plenty of “well patient” visits providing better income – so why bother?

If this sounds bad, it’s because it is. For those who like their anesthesiologist pain care person, good for you. Many of us aren’t so fortunate. And someday you might not be either.

I’m not sure how much worse this will get, with patients losing access to opioids or seeing their doses cut, while overdose death rates continue to rise -- refuting CDC wisdom. Taking meds from chronic pain patients isn’t going to fix a problem caused by healthy people with illegal intentions.

Maybe some powerful mainstream media source will actually ask someone in power what's going on and not settle for anything other than a straight answer. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Take the unfortunate demise of Prince and how it has been reported. Whenever someone with career-induced injuries attempts to defeat aging by taking illicit opioid pain medication to continue performing 20 year old moves on a 57-year old body, bad things will result. It shouldn’t be rocket science to figure that out, yet I don’t recall a single media source saying that.

Instead, Prince has become another idiotic reason legitimate patients shouldn’t get opioid pain care – all because he intentionally misused it to extend his career. Because of the actions of a few, the vast majority will suffer. Not exactly stellar for the most expensive healthcare system in the world, is it?

Richard Oberg, MD, is disabled by psoriatic arthritis and no longer practices medicine. Dr. Oberg receives no funding from pharmaceutical companies. 

