American Healthcare Choices | Good News: Opioid Prescribing Fell. The Bad? Pain Patients Suffer, Doctors Say.

Three years ago this month, as alarms were sounding across the country about the over-prescription of opioid painkillers, the federal government issued course-correcting guidelines for primary care doctors. But in a letter sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, more than 300 medical experts, including three former White House drug czars, contend that the guidelines are harming one group of vulnerable patients: those with severe chronic pain who may have been taking opioids for years, without becoming addicted, so they can function in daily life and work. The leaders say the guidelines are being used as cover by insurers to deny reimbursement and by doctors to turn patients away.