The Washington Post notes that prescription pain medication is especially difficult to obtain in low income areas. Reprter Marc Kaufman questions the pharmaceutical industry at length about the problem, but doesn’t think to ask anyone from the DEA to offer an explanation.

First, pain meds are getting difficult to find just about everywhere. But there are several explanation as to why they’d be even more rare in low-income and minority areas:

1) Conventional wisdom says illicit drug use is more common in low-income areas. That means doctors serving those areas are likely to give potential pain patients extra scrutiny to be sure they aren’t selling the stuff the minute they step out of the office, thus covering their own hides from a possible investigation.

2) Drug cops are likely to focus more directly on low-income and minority neighborhoods, given that same conventional wisdom. More drug cops snooping about means neighborhood doctors are going to be less likely to prescribe Schedule II drugs, to cover their own hides from a possible investigation.

3) Doctors in low-income areas have a high proportion of patients on Medicaid. It’s easier to monitor the prescribing habits of doctors who see Medicaid patients than those who don’t. And if a doctor does get hit with charges, he can get hit for both drug distribution and Medicaid fraud. Consequently, doctors with a high proportion of Medicaid patients are going to be less likely to prescribe Schedule II drugs in order to cover their own hides from a possible investigation.

Notice a pattern here?

There also seems to be a twinge of blame on the pharmaceutical industry in this story. I’m not sure why. Manufacturers of opiate painkillers, after all, have been accused by the government, the media, and anti-pharma critics of saturating the market with too many painkillers, particularly in areas of (mis)reported widespread OxyContin abuse. Now they get heat for not putting enough Oxy-like drugs in low-income, high-crime areas. I have my own problems with big Pharma. But in this case, they really can’t win.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 9:38 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Pain Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.