As the Indian government reluctantly loosens its prescription opioid laws after decades of lobbying by palliative care advocates desperate to ease their patients’ pain, the nation’s sprawling, cash-fed health care system is ripe for misuse.
What began in India as a populist movement to bring inexpensive morphine to the diseased and dying poor has paved the way for a booming pain management industry. Now, new customers are being funneled to U.S. drugmakers bedeviled by a government crackdown back home.
Wyoming is taking on expensive air ambulance bills by trying to expand Medicaid to cover transport for all patients. This is a big change: a red state seeking to control what’s been a growing free-market bonanza.
In response to recent high-profile sex abuse cases, some California lawmakers want doctors to give patients more information about pelvic exams, and then get a signature proving they did. Doctors in the Golden State and beyond are pushing back.
Dialysis companies are fighting a bill in the California legislature that could disrupt their business model. Their weapons: campaign cash and a sophisticated public relations campaign.