Oregon Drops Opioid Tapering Plan — Pain News Network – by Pat Anson – May 17, 2019
Thank goodness a bit of sanity has prevailed. I have little to add right now – you can read the full article here.
An Oregon health panel has tabled a controversial plan that would have forced tens of thousands of Medicaid patients with neck and back pain to stop taking opioid medication.
The Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC) voted unanimously to wait for additional studies to be completed later this year, which effectively delays any change in medical coverage under the Oregon Health Plan until 2022.
The forced tapering plan drew nationwide criticism from pain sufferers, patient advocates and pain management experts, who said it would “exacerbate suffering for thousands of patients.”
“Pain is complicated and different for everyone,” said HERC chairman Kevin Olson, MD, in a statement.
“We heard loud and clear that pain treatment and opioid tapering should be individualized based on the patient-clinician relationship. I am pleased that we were able to align the neck and back coverage with these principles.”
If a patient with any chronic pain condition is not doing well with an opioid taper, HERC said the tapering should stop without consequence to the prescriber or patient.
But patient advocates say some doctors have already implemented HERC’s forced tapering proposal without waiting for it to be finalized.
HERC’s decision to reverse course on tapering was a significant and rare victory for the pain community, which rarely gets a set at the table or is listened to when political and regulatory decisions are made about opioid medication.
Last year over a hundred pain management experts signed a letter to HERC warning that its tapering plan would have been the most restrictive in the U.S. and was unsupported by treatment guidelines.
That warning was recently echoed by the Food and Drug Administration, which said rapid tapering and forced discontinuation of opioids was causing “serious harm” to patients, including withdrawal, uncontrolled pain, psychological distress and suicide.
EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info 
Victory ? Perhaps. But: How many intractable pain sufferer’s lives were made unimaginably worse, or worse yet, had to end their own lives -to END the miserly suffering ?
This “victory” must take those (thousands?) of severely impacted patients into account; such legislation is grounds for a (retro) class-action lawsuit for what amounts to Crimes Against Humanity -no matter how one cares to ‘package’ it: Malfeasance, Attempted Murder, Human Cruelty, Failing to Provide the Necessities of Life, etc.
Once this (I fear far from over) catastrophic state of terrorism (upon its own people) is thoroughly exposed, hundreds-of-millions of dollars in monetary compensation awarded -and those responsible for such crimes individually and/or collectively charged and jailed, a Victory (for future generations) can be claimed.
Until then, such abusive powers may very well resurface -on a whim.
pj
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This was a big accomplishment, & several advocates worked incredibly hard for almost 2 years to accomplish it. I was at the meeting, and the incredibly torturous, illogical, anti-evidence wriggling the task farce went thru to try & stick to their predetermined agenda was incredible. I was fairly astonished when they agreed not to stick to the forced tapers…but. They have a new “Tapering Task Force” (which, as usual, nobody had heard of before; they try to do everything in secret). The TTF has its 3rd meeting next month…& they clearly have no intention of disbanding the TTF, which makes me very, very concerned that this underhanded, lying, double-dealing group still has plans/hopes of re-instating the forced tapers.
We still had a huge defeat on getting a huge (nearly comprehensive) list of chronic pain conditions covered…they refused to overturn the “no coverage” dictate for absolutely moronic, illogical, & insane non-reasons.
And peter, many of us talked about the horror of unknown numbers of people who have died and committed suicide due to forced tapers, in Oregon & nationwide. What in God’s name is the task farce, CDC et al going to say to their loved ones…”Oops sorry, but it wasn’t our fault –‘others misapplied’ things?” I can say with certainty that the Oregon loons won’t apologize for anything; they are still completely convinced that their absolute anti-opiate stance is correct & are impervious to outside facts; their belief trumps all. And I am very worried that they’ll reinstate the forced taper & ban…they kept talking about some “huge evidence” that should come in in the next 3 months that could “affect their decisions.” And since this group only & always diddles & fiddles & mangles evidence so that it always backs whatever they want it to back…yikes.
Oh yeah; the incredibly pathetic, ludicrous thing they did that completely confirms their phenomenally skewed view of pain patients: for the afternoon meeting, where there were many more CPPs than the 10 or so at the morning meeting, they hired an armed security guard to protect themselves from the “hysterical” & “illogical”* crazy pain patients (their words).
And they said, on record, that they needed to make sure they turned the mic off during lunch…you can’t believe some of the bigoted, contemptuous, hateful things they’ve said on the record about us. And laughed at us.
It is truly insane out here.
*talk about screaming irony & hypocrisy!
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I just saw this comment by one of our main advocates about the taper task force (which actually meets this thursday):
“The OHA and HERC said at the last HERC meeting, they would be using the recommendations of this task force when they reopen the back and spine guidelines next winter. This is NOT good news. Jim Shames [a TTF member] was even a member on the back task force, when the HERC came up with guidelines note 60 (prohibition of opioids for back spine chronic pain for medicaid).”
Also, most of the members are recycled from & all are appointed by the anti-opioid fundamentalists. No pain patient or pain treating doc on it, either. these people never, ever change.
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(sorry, can’t edit previous comment):
There’s a call/listen-in line if anyone wants to hear how these folks operate:
Oregon Opioid Taper Guidelines Task Force
May 23, 2019
1:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Conference Line: 1-888-278-0296
PUBIC COMMENT 3:45PM.
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L-A-W S-U-I-T. Must I really keep repeating this ?????
How much more human abuse, rule-of-law abuse -basically criminal activity must one suffer before taking action ?????
I’m ready to throw-in my first $50.00 to the cause.
Are you willing to join, fight and defend your rights ?
Will YOU (all of us) contribute financially ?
(You know cold, hard lawyer-satisfying money.)
Let’s stop playing games and have dedicated (payed professionals) do their thing.
pj
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LOL. Not one person/Group willing to fork-over some self-help money ?????
Makes me wonder how many out there (reading this Blog) are really suffering ?
Not one reply -offer to start a ‘fund’ ????/?
PATHETIC.
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