Abstract
Due to fiscal tightening, the Opioid epidemic and high numbers of fraudulent claims, federal disability insurance designations are becoming harder to get and maintain without a definite verifiable diagnosis and therapeutically compliant patient. Opioids will be much harder to acquire other than for short term treatment of acute injury.
Millions of people are currently dependent upon disability insurance.
Disability benefits were paid to almost 10.2 million people.
In December, payments to disabled beneficiaries totaled more than $11.3 billion.
Benefits were terminated for 820,372 disabled workers.
Supplemental Security Income payments were another source of income for about one out of six disabled beneficiaries. Average age was 54 with genders being about equal.
The largest category of diagnoses was diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (32.3 percent).
During the time period of around 1996 to about 2001 Purdue Pharma was marketing Oxycontin and started the first real wave of pain medication addiction. Then came the recession in December 2007 which ended around June 2009. During this time, through 2015 there was a major shift of people going from unemployment benefits to disability benefits. This trend started as we went into a recession and as it continued and the delayed effects caused businesses to pull back, people lost jobs and understandably, went on unemployment insurance.
Unemployment benefits last for only so long and even with extensions these benefits were coming to an end even though the economy was still weak and jobs hard to get. As the affordable care act was being implemented we saw movement of people off of unemployment and on to disability. The reason that this was such a detrimental trend was that disability insurance benefits originally hard to acquire had less requirements than in prior times and the benefits had no real end to how long they could go. The cost of these benefits to society are huge, not only in the direct benefit payment but in that people were no longer productive but also in that they had to first be verified, which is a cost to the system, but then these people needed treatment which is another cost. Most disability claims involve an injury and/or pain which is subjective and so people with pain were given Opioid pain medication in order to mitigate the discomfort. This helped to create a whole new class of people with OUD (Opioid use disorder).
Not all, but many people had normal aches and pains but claimed severe pain and disability in order to get financial benefits and doctors could not force patients to seek therapy so there they are with no real disability but a route to get Opioids, a motive to continue, and a disincentive to stop. Some of these people realized that they were addicted and sought help. As these people went into withdrawal they would have pain symptoms directly from withdrawal but that mimicked real injury pain and so were very leery about quitting their Opioid pain medications.
Our experience then showed that when people started on Buprenorphine (suboxone, Zubsolv, Bunavail), they no longer had pain. This then complicated things because if there was no identifiable injury and there was no longer a disability due to pain, would they still get disability benefits? Many people then went back to work as the economy got better but some still remain with no identifiable disability, no or little pain, and no job, so they remain on disability. There are other complications involving these OUD patients that make the situation even more complicated.
As some of the treating Doctors realized that their patients may be becoming addicted and not really understanding addiction well, they would suddenly cut patients off of their Opioids. If the patient was actually addicted, they would go into withdrawal and would need to get their Opioids elsewhere either by Dr shopping, ERs or buying pills off the street. The problem with this is that street pills are very expensive and since heroin is cheap in comparison and can be snorted instead of injected, many then became addicted to heroin.
A major problem in this Opioid epidemic still exists and that is that Doctors are still giving pain pills to patients without outside verification’s of their condition or mandatory therapy for that condition. It seems that the Doctors cannot or do not want to go against their patients wishes for pain pills for fear of lawsuit or losing their patient and will mask the symptoms of an injury without determining what the actual problem is or actually treating the problem. The current trend in medicine is that long term treatment with Opioids should only be for those who have an identifiable and definite diagnosis with no prognosis of improvement even with therapy such as bone cancer etc. If the identification of the cause of the pain is not clearly determined then physical therapy and frequent reevaluation would be mandatory in order to keep disability insurance benefits. This is due to the high rate of fraud in disability claims.
Other financial/social effects of this trend are the lifestyle implications of addiction. These include legal system costs, reclusiveness, loss of job, loss of relationships, strain on the medical and ER systems and drug related side effects and symptoms.
Due to the current Opioid crisis and the trend towards a tightening of social systems, we expect to see disability coverage becoming more and more difficult to maintain without clear cut diagnosis and therapeutic treatment plan compliance. Certainly, Opioids will be much more difficult to come by legally and the people dependent upon them will need help correcting the dependency problem.
If you feel that you or a loved one could be in this situation please call BRIGHTside Clinic at 224-205-7866 for a friendly consultation or visit our website at www.brightsideclinic.com. We can help you with, knowing your options and we can help you develop perspective so that you can make informed decisions about your future.
Abstract
Due to fiscal tightening, the Opioid epidemic and high numbers of fraudulent claims, federal disability insurance designations are becoming harder to get and maintain without a definite verifiable diagnosis and therapeutically compliant patient. Opioids will be much harder to acquire other than for short term treatment of acute injury.
Millions of people are currently dependent upon disability insurance.
Disability benefits were paid to almost 10.2 million people.
In December, payments to disabled beneficiaries totaled more than $11.3 billion.
Benefits were terminated for 820,372 disabled workers.
Supplemental Security Income payments were another source of income for about one out of six disabled beneficiaries. Average age was 54 with genders being about equal.
The largest category of diagnoses was diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (32.3 percent).
During the time period of around 1996 to about 2001 Purdue Pharma was marketing Oxycontin and started the first real wave of pain medication addiction. Then came the recession in December 2007 which ended around June 2009. During this time, through 2015 there was a major shift of people going from unemployment benefits to disability benefits. This trend started as we went into a recession and as it continued and the delayed effects caused businesses to pull back, people lost jobs and understandably, went on unemployment insurance.
Unemployment benefits last for only so long and even with extensions these benefits were coming to an end even though the economy was still weak and jobs hard to get. As the affordable care act was being implemented we saw movement of people off of unemployment and on to disability. The reason that this was such a detrimental trend was that disability insurance benefits originally hard to acquire had less requirements than in prior times and the benefits had no real end to how long they could go. The cost of these benefits to society are huge, not only in the direct benefit payment but in that people were no longer productive but also in that they had to first be verified, which is a cost to the system, but then these people needed treatment which is another cost. Most disability claims involve an injury and/or pain which is subjective and so people with pain were given Opioid pain medication in order to mitigate the discomfort. This helped to create a whole new class of people with OUD (Opioid use disorder).
Not all, but many people had normal aches and pains but claimed severe pain and disability in order to get financial benefits and doctors could not force patients to seek therapy so there they are with no real disability but a route to get Opioids, a motive to continue, and a disincentive to stop. Some of these people realized that they were addicted and sought help. As these people went into withdrawal they would have pain symptoms directly from withdrawal but that mimicked real injury pain and so were very leery about quitting their Opioid pain medications.
Our experience then showed that when people started on Buprenorphine (suboxone, Zubsolv, Bunavail), they no longer had pain. This then complicated things because if there was no identifiable injury and there was no longer a disability due to pain, would they still get disability benefits? Many people then went back to work as the economy got better but some still remain with no identifiable disability, no or little pain, and no job, so they remain on disability. There are other complications involving these OUD patients that make the situation even more complicated.
As some of the treating Doctors realized that their patients may be becoming addicted and not really understanding addiction well, they would suddenly cut patients off of their Opioids. If the patient was actually addicted, they would go into withdrawal and would need to get their Opioids elsewhere either by Dr shopping, ERs or buying pills off the street. The problem with this is that street pills are very expensive and since heroin is cheap in comparison and can be snorted instead of injected, many then became addicted to heroin.
A major problem in this Opioid epidemic still exists and that is that Doctors are still giving pain pills to patients without outside verification’s of their condition or mandatory therapy for that condition. It seems that the Doctors cannot or do not want to go against their patients wishes for pain pills for fear of lawsuit or losing their patient and will mask the symptoms of an injury without determining what the actual problem is or actually treating the problem. The current trend in medicine is that long term treatment with Opioids should only be for those who have an identifiable and definite diagnosis with no prognosis of improvement even with therapy such as bone cancer etc. If the identification of the cause of the pain is not clearly determined then physical therapy and frequent reevaluation would be mandatory in order to keep disability insurance benefits. This is due to the high rate of fraud in disability claims.
Other financial/social effects of this trend are the lifestyle implications of addiction. These include legal system costs, reclusiveness, loss of job, loss of relationships, strain on the medical and ER systems and drug related side effects and symptoms.
Due to the current Opioid crisis and the trend towards a tightening of social systems, we expect to see disability coverage becoming more and more difficult to maintain without clear cut diagnosis and therapeutic treatment plan compliance. Certainly, Opioids will be much more difficult to come by legally and the people dependent upon them will need help correcting the dependency problem.
If you feel that you or a loved one could be in this situation please call BRIGHTside Clinic at 224-205-7866 for a friendly consultation or visit our website at www.brightsideclinic.com. We can help you with, knowing your options and we can help you develop perspective so that you can make informed decisions about your future.
Abstract
Due to fiscal tightening, the Opioid epidemic and high numbers of fraudulent claims, federal disability insurance designations are becoming harder to get and maintain without a definite verifiable diagnosis and therapeutically compliant patient. Opioids will be much harder to acquire other than for short term treatment of acute injury.
Millions of people are currently dependent upon disability insurance.
Disability benefits were paid to almost 10.2 million people.
In December, payments to disabled beneficiaries totaled more than $11.3 billion.
Benefits were terminated for 820,372 disabled workers.
Supplemental Security Income payments were another source of income for about one out of six disabled beneficiaries. Average age was 54 with genders being about equal.
The largest category of diagnoses was diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (32.3 percent).
During the time period of around 1996 to about 2001 Purdue Pharma was marketing Oxycontin and started the first real wave of pain medication addiction. Then came the recession in December 2007 which ended around June 2009. During this time, through 2015 there was a major shift of people going from unemployment benefits to disability benefits. This trend started as we went into a recession and as it continued and the delayed effects caused businesses to pull back, people lost jobs and understandably, went on unemployment insurance.
Unemployment benefits last for only so long and even with extensions these benefits were coming to an end even though the economy was still weak and jobs hard to get. As the affordable care act was being implemented we saw movement of people off of unemployment and on to disability. The reason that this was such a detrimental trend was that disability insurance benefits originally hard to acquire had less requirements than in prior times and the benefits had no real end to how long they could go. The cost of these benefits to society are huge, not only in the direct benefit payment but in that people were no longer productive but also in that they had to first be verified, which is a cost to the system, but then these people needed treatment which is another cost. Most disability claims involve an injury and/or pain which is subjective and so people with pain were given Opioid pain medication in order to mitigate the discomfort. This helped to create a whole new class of people with OUD (Opioid use disorder).
Not all, but many people had normal aches and pains but claimed severe pain and disability in order to get financial benefits and doctors could not force patients to seek therapy so there they are with no real disability but a route to get Opioids, a motive to continue, and a disincentive to stop. Some of these people realized that they were addicted and sought help. As these people went into withdrawal they would have pain symptoms directly from withdrawal but that mimicked real injury pain and so were very leery about quitting their Opioid pain medications.
Our experience then showed that when people started on Buprenorphine (suboxone, Zubsolv, Bunavail), they no longer had pain. This then complicated things because if there was no identifiable injury and there was no longer a disability due to pain, would they still get disability benefits? Many people then went back to work as the economy got better but some still remain with no identifiable disability, no or little pain, and no job, so they remain on disability. There are other complications involving these OUD patients that make the situation even more complicated.
As some of the treating Doctors realized that their patients may be becoming addicted and not really understanding addiction well, they would suddenly cut patients off of their Opioids. If the patient was actually addicted, they would go into withdrawal and would need to get their Opioids elsewhere either by Dr shopping, ERs or buying pills off the street. The problem with this is that street pills are very expensive and since heroin is cheap in comparison and can be snorted instead of injected, many then became addicted to heroin.
A major problem in this Opioid epidemic still exists and that is that Doctors are still giving pain pills to patients without outside verification’s of their condition or mandatory therapy for that condition. It seems that the Doctors cannot or do not want to go against their patients wishes for pain pills for fear of lawsuit or losing their patient and will mask the symptoms of an injury without determining what the actual problem is or actually treating the problem. The current trend in medicine is that long term treatment with Opioids should only be for those who have an identifiable and definite diagnosis with no prognosis of improvement even with therapy such as bone cancer etc. If the identification of the cause of the pain is not clearly determined then physical therapy and frequent reevaluation would be mandatory in order to keep disability insurance benefits. This is due to the high rate of fraud in disability claims.
Other financial/social effects of this trend are the lifestyle implications of addiction. These include legal system costs, reclusiveness, loss of job, loss of relationships, strain on the medical and ER systems and drug related side effects and symptoms.
Due to the current Opioid crisis and the trend towards a tightening of social systems, we expect to see disability coverage becoming more and more difficult to maintain without clear cut diagnosis and therapeutic treatment plan compliance. Certainly, Opioids will be much more difficult to come by legally and the people dependent upon them will need help correcting the dependency problem.
If you feel that you or a loved one could be in this situation please call BRIGHTside Clinic at 224-205-7866 for a friendly consultation or visit our website at www.brightsideclinic.com. We can help you with, knowing your options and we can help you develop perspective so that you can make informed decisions about your future.