Pushing Pills For Profit?

Dave EttlPublished: October 19, 2015

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - MAY 15: Prescription medication is pictured on May 15, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand. Bill English has delivered his sixth budget which included a $493 million families package, which includes extending paid parental leave and will introduce free doctors' visits and prescriptions for under 13s. It was also announced that the Government Budget would run at a surplus of $372 million for the 12 months to June 30, 2015. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Have we reached a point when hands on modern medicine has been reduced to popping pills? Seems some doctors are fast on the draw with the prescription pad when compared to their peers.

Doctors take an oath to do no harm, so it really can't be a good sign that ten percent of doctors are responsible for writing the majority of painkiller prescriptions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the painkiller prescriptions written in eight states, and found a small percentage of doctors were writing the majority of them.

For example, they found that in Idaho, 49.6 percent of opioid prescriptions were written by only ten percent of physicians, while in Delaware that number climbed to 65.9 percent. These doctors were also found to be writing substantially larger daily dosages. The top 20% of doctors account for more than two-thirds of painkiller prescriptions in all of the test states..

A report in the SFChronicle on line includes this passage

: "There are such a small percentage of doctors writing so, so, so many prescriptions. That certainly raises the question whether doctors are orienting their practices around writing prescriptions for workers' compensation patients," said Dr. Jerry Avorn, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In general, the dosages prescribed by prescription-happy physicians were about double their more conservative colleagues. (Consumerist)