Despite the fact that the legal theories in these suits are all over the place when it comes to liability theories, and that each one, based on the facts, is wafer-thin at best, they are nevertheless supported by popular opinion. The fact that the state of Oklahoma, no one's idea of a liberal paradise, would file a suit like this is a strong testament to that. For once, big business lost big (although not as big as it could have lost) in a very red state. And the loss is already having a ripple effect on the other pending suits. Just this past week, Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, offered to fund a settlement pool of up to $12 billion and surrender ownership of OxyContin, in exchange for filing for bankruptcy.
This is precisely the sort of innovation-destroying, consumer-frustrating, blame-everyone-but-the-addicts-screwing-things-up litigation that the lawsuit-abuse folks on the conservative side of our great political divide love to complain about. Here, however, they seem to be curiously silent.
I feel fairly certain that there's a connection between that fact and the fact that a significant number of opioid-related deaths are from Trump country. Putting the matter bluntly, these are the deaths of white people from former factory and farming communities. They see themselves differently from the way they see the drug-related deaths of African-Americans in poverty-ridden inner-city neighborhoods. Those deaths have nothing to do with centuries of racism, and the poverty and despair that stems from it. No, that's just because "those people" are "animals," in contrast to the hard-working white folks of the heartland. If they chose to abuse prescription drugs rather than addressing their misery in a more constructive way (i.e., relocating, going back to school, voting for someone other than self-enriching Republicans), well, Trump voters are privileged folk. Their privilege is as deep as the color of their skin, And, of course, just like their Fearless Leader, there's no arguing with them about it.
But there is, of course, another side to all of this. In fact, there's a whole other opioid crisis that I'll wager you haven't heard about. It's very real. It's created an enormous amount of suffering. And it's suffering that my wife and I take very, very personally.
It's this crisis. The one in which people who, for entirely legitimate, medical, non-economic-distress-related reasons, need access to serious pain medication. And can't get it, because of health care professionals more worried about protecting themselves from specious lawsuits than they are about fulfilling their professional and ethical obligations to the public.
And why do my wife and I take it so personally?
First, a word of full disclosure. My wife and I are both lawyers; in fact, we are both partners in our own law firm. Neither of us is a tort lawyer, so we have no interest or stake in the personal injury-medical malpractice mill. There are no charges of hypocrisy, therefore, that can be fairly lobbed at either of us for what I am about to say.
And both of us have experienced personally the opioid backlash in medical treatment.
In my case, it was a consequence of a referral to an endodontist for a root canal. After the procedure, I assumed he was going to give me a limited prescription for hydrocodone, or something similar. You know what I got instead? An offer for free Tylenol. Tylenol. An over-the-counter pain reliever that is fine for the occasional tension headache, but is less than worthless for the level of post-procedure pain that a root canal procedures. Not only did the pain that the endodontist refuse to treat or even acknowledge keep me awake for nearly an entire week, but, at one point, it made me bite down on one of my rear molars so hard that I literally fractured it in half. And had to go to yet another endodontist to have the fragments of that molar removed. I've still got the empty space in the back of my mouth to remind me about it.
But that's nothing compared to what my poor wife has had to go through over the past four-plus weeks. She had knee-replacement surgery at the very beginning of this month. I remembered how my late father was give a morphine pump to use after his hip-replacement surgeries, so I had some idea of the pain level involved with a joint-replacement procedure. I couldn't imagine that this wouldn't be treated the same way.
Well, guess what, folks? It wasn't. She was give a less-than-full-strength prescription medication--a very, very limited supply--and, you guess it, folks, Tylenol. She's been home for the past few weeks, doing all of her physical therapy, recovering well ahead of schedule, getting back to work and serving her clients, because that's the type of person she is. But she's been doing it without any real pain medication, and consequently with little or no sleep, for the past, I repeat, four weeks plus. That's partly a tribute to her pain threshold, which I am always in awe of. But it's also a tribute to her doctor's refusal to her doctor's refusal to prescribe any serious pain medication. Even after she asked him to do so, he gave her a prescription of 10 pills at a dosage of 5 milligams.
Neither my wife nor I are addicts. We fully understand the risks of addiction with certain types of medication. We have always, in the past, when we were able to get prescription medication, used it in a responsible way, as prescribed, without asking for more than we needed. We want to be able to continue to do so, and there clearly are thousands of Americans who are in exactly the same position we have been. I am writing this on behalf of all of them, as well as for my wife and me. I am pleading with the medical profession, and the companies that insure them, to not try to solve one opioid crisis by creating another--and, in the process, created a black market for opioids that will do nothing but exacerbate the initial crisis.
The mandate to do no harm works in more directions that one. Opioids should not be overprescribed. But they shouldn't be underprescribed, either.
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