Solving our opioid addiction epidemic by providing discount coupons to buy more opioids? Lessons for T2 diabetes.
Opioid addiction is now defined as a chronic disease. Fortunately, we are not focused on solving this problem by finding ways to give these chronic disease patients discount coupons to buy opioids more cheaply. One might make an argument that cheaper or free opioids would actually help: it would reduce crime or perhaps even save a life in some situations. But clearly cheaper opioids is not a solution to the underlying problem behind the opioid addiction epidemic that still kills more than 100 people per day in the U.S.
More cheaper opioids for these chronic disease patients would lead to even more over-dose and other deaths, costly ER visits, poor quality of life and organ damage. Instead, opioid addiction can and should be reversed whenever possible.
There’s a lesson here for addressing another chronic disease epidemic that doesn’t kill 100, but 700+ people per day in the U.S.: Diabetes or specifically T2 Diabetes (T2D). Surprisingly, there are similarities with the opioid addiction epidemic.
With T2D, we’ve become focused on celebrating access to cheaper (or better) diabetes drugs, for example, recently celebrating lower insulin co-pay for Medicare beneficiaries. There are many benefits — sometimes even life saving — with lower drug prices, but similar to opioid addiction, cheaper drugs don’t solve the problem: T2D is a progressive disease that often leads into organ damage, death, amputations, costly ER visits (e.g. when overdosing insulin which results in hypoglycemia) and generally poor quality of life and ever-increasing health care costs year after year. Cheaper drugs for such a progressively worsening chronic disease, whether opioid addiction or T2D, is not the solution. In some ways, it is actually making the situation worse.
The solution is addressing the underlying cause of the disease and reversing or eliminating the disease where possible. We know opioid addiction can be reversed/eliminated. Fortunately, we also now know that T2D can be reversed and the need for T2 diabetes medications, such as insulin eliminated. This, not lower drug prices, cuts the progression of the disease towards organ failure, ER visits and ever-increasing health care costs.
Doing everything to lower drug prices is a good thing. But to think that lower drug prices are a solution to a debilitating chronic disease, such as T2D, is a huge mistake. This thinking may economically benefit some, but certainly not the T2D patients themselves. There’s already too much pain among those living with T2D.
Let’s aim higher and focus on reversing and eliminating chronic diseases.
