User talk:DixieLee369/sandbox

Killer Profits from Painkillers
As the death toll keeps rising, with a 21% increase at 19.8 per every 100,000 people, in overdose deaths in 2016 from the year prior, reporting a lesser amount of 16.3 per every 100,000 people [1], it has been said that fewer people die from breast cancer than from the misuse of opioids every year [2]. That is tragic. Even more tragic is how 2016 marked the second consecutive year that the life expectancy at birth has declined [3] and that these numbers are expected to keep rising.

With numbers like those, it almost seems like the whole opioid epidemic should be called, “Prescription Genocide for Profit” instead. Researchers from Harvard University teamed up with CNN to compound an exclusive analysis. According to Kessler, Cohen, & Grise [4], “In 2014 and 2015, opioid manufacturers paid hundreds of doctors across the country six-figure sums for speaking, consulting and other services. Thousands of other doctors were paid over $25,000 during that time. Physicians who prescribed particularly large amounts of the drugs were the most likely to get paid” (para. 2-3).

Using the Open Payments database, a database run by the federal government that tracks payments to doctors made by drug companies and also keeps track of the prescriptions that are written to Medicare recipients, researchers found some astonishing facts. According to Tringale, Marshall, & Mackey [5], “In 2015, 449 864 of 933 295 physicians, representing approximately 48% of all US physicians were reported to have received $2.4 billion in industry payments” (Abstract, Results sec.). So, half of America’s licensed physicians were receiving payouts from the opioid drug makers.

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