I was in pain for decades prior to the surgeries, I had days that I had to roll out of bed and pull myself up to a standing position and still went to work because I had a family to fee, clothe and put a roof over. The lumbar surgery did not help, I don't blame the surgeon, spinal surgeries are crap shoot. As far as the cervical, again the issue was ongoing for years, I had four disks that basically disintegrated and were compressing nerves which caused permanent damage and was 'repaired' by replacing the disks with donor(cadaver) bone and fusing them but again the damage was done and only partially relieved.
Are there pill pushers out there? Of course, but I don't believe that the majority of doctors intentionally addict patients to create customers. What I haven't seen discussed is the insurance companies role in this, you attack the doctors as being lazy and prescribing pills instead of referring a patient to a specialist when in fact the physicians hands may be tied by the patients coverage or dictated by insurance company. I know when I had Kaiser they blew me off for years and I paid for a fairly high level of coverage. The funny thing was when I became unemployed and no one would hire an old fart even though he was a skilled trade old fart and my benefits ran out and I ended up on MediCal my new doctor had no issue with sending me to pain management who contrary to what you seem to believe sent me for an MRI, was abashed at what he saw and sent me to a orthopedic surgeon. The surgeon was even more alarmed at the damage he saw to my spine and we started discussing surgery. Mind you Kaisers response for years was to ignore the damage shown on the X Rays, tell me it was my head or to just 'tuff it out' for a couple of weeks and it would go away...........eventually.
So you finally got a decent doctor who recognized the damage and sent you to a specialist.
Now, let's suppose you had had a doctor who would have acted as that doctor did, NOT ignoring the damage on the X-Rays, years earlier?
Would you have suffered the damage you did? Likely not, and that's my point. Telling you to "tough it out" is as bogus as just telling you to take a painkiller and keep on keeping on.
Whatever the case may have been, be it pressure from the HMO to not adequately treat a degenerating condition, the incompetence of the doctor, getting tossed to the wolves because despite your coverage because it's expensive to do right, the Kaiser crew shafted you. That's precisely the sort of "Health Care" I can do without, and often have.
Two of the last three medical issues I have had, I diagnosed before I even went to the doctor (a hernia and basal cell carcinoma), the third, they shrugged off as "in my head", and I accidentally cured myself after two years of pain and misery (tobacco juice kills
heliobacter pylori, who knew?), and only found out exactly what was wrong a year later when my father (who has better doctors where he is) started describing the exact same symptoms, and his diagnosis. I still don't spit when I use smokeless tobacco, and my digestive tract works just fine, no pain, no ulcer between the duodenum and the small intestine.
I'm not saying all doctors are lazy, or incompetent, but there are enough out there who fit that description, who will treat the symptoms and not the cause--if they even treat the symptoms. I have suffered enough at the hands of those who would not pursue a diagnosis nor refer me to someone who would. Unfortunately,those are the doctors who contribute to the problem by not acknowledging or diagnosing the cause of the pain a patient has, and then assuming the patient is just there for drugs, and then sometimes not administering them either.
If I had my way, you would not be in pain, and I'll pray for your relief.
As I have said upthread, a lot of this 'crisis' is a 60s redux relapse of Heroin, augmented by Fentanyl and Carfentanil (hopefully, but not always, adequately diluted to not kill people) on the street. That isn't a doctor problem, it's a drug/Cartel problem, and while effective pharmaceutical pain medications are being stolen or sometimes prescribed for profit by unscrupulous and greedy doctors and otherwise shunted into that street market,
I would not stop those who have a legitimate need for the medication from having access to that. That need will never be identified by lazy or incompetent doctors, and you have suffered not only pain, but further damage because of that.
That's coming from someone who nearly lost a grandson to an OD, saved by the Grace of God, a convenience store clerk who saw him get rolled out of the pickup and locked the till and went outsid of the store to give him CPR, and a police officer who arrived with Naloxone to negate the Heroin. He's clean now two years (had a come to Jesus moment over that), and doing well (Thank God). But those were street drugs, not pharmaceuticals, and not prescribed.
One more thing, how much money are the insurance companies gonna save if the pain meds are cut back? After all, I'd wager Kaiser didn't want to shell out for your treatment, either, and there may have been some corporate pressure to look the other way.
