Spending For Prescription Pain Medicines Has Tripled In 10 Years
Main Category: Pharmacy / PharmacistArticle Date: 13 Feb 2009 - 3:00 PDT
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Expenditures for outpatient prescription analgesics commonly known as painkillers and medicines that treat aches and pains increased from $4.2 billion in 1996 to $13.2 billion in 2006, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. These medications include narcotic analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and Cox-2 inhibitors, among others.
AHRQ also found that for outpatient prescription analgesics from 1996 and 2006:
-- The average annual expenditure jumped from $83 to $232 for people who purchased one or more prescription analgesics
-- For each analgesic purchased, the average expenditure rose from $26 to $57.
-- The total number of prescription purchases increased from about 164 million to 231 million.
AHRQ, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, works to enhance the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care in the United States. The data in this AHRQ News and Numbers summary are taken from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a detailed source of information on the health services used by Americans, the frequency with which they are used, the cost of those services, and how they are paid.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
540 Gaither Rd.
Rockville
MD 20850
United States
http://www.ahrq.gov
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MLA
16 Feb. 2012. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/138860.php>
APA
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/138860.php.
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The Apex O Opium
posted by Dan on 13 Feb 2009 at 3:15 amThe Dangerously Euphoric Violet Delight
Often, medications for pain are made from opoid plants. These purple-flowered plants produce opium poppies, which are used in the production of the analgesic, opium. Opium is what we in the U.S. call narcotics, and they dull and numb one who ingests what may be made by these opium poppies, as there are several drugs that have been developed from what these plants provide that are these prevalent narcotics.
Some medications are from natural opium, such as cocaine, or the opiates from the poppy seeds can be used to create semi-synthetic medications, such as Heroin. Heroin was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals for 12 years, and during that time this company told others that heroin was a non-addicting form of morphine (pure opiate drug), since there were many soldiers addicted to morphine after the U.S Civil War. During that same period of time, Bayer marketed heroin for children who coughed. Of course, Heroin is very addictive, and is pointless creation is no longer available.
While Poppy plants exist and are grown in areas of IndoChina, Afghanistan is the number one producer of poppy plants. The United States is the number one country that consumes what is derived from these plants.
Opium-derived medicines once could be bought freely in the U.S. by anyone less than 100 years ago. Yet now, they are classified by the Drug Enforcement Agency as narcotics, and are scheduled by them, according to the danger they potentially could cause another who takes them. Internationally, the opium trade has been international, and brutal force by various nations has been implemented to control this powerful plant that is a catalyst for synthetic elation.
While prescribed to patients for such issues aside from pain on occasion, such as chronic coughing and diarrhea, their greatest benefit is for the relief of pain experienced often by patients is the primary reason doctors prescribe opoid drugs, and they do so often. Vicodin, a mild narcotic, is the most frequently prescribed medication in the U.S. presently.
If patients take opium-derived drugs for long periods of time, tolerance may develop, and the patient may need to take more of the drug to acquire an effect of relief. In addition, the patient may develop a dependence on these types of drugs, which can lead to addiction and possible abuse. This is why overdose of these types of medicine occur- as the reasons for taking these drugs initially become replaced with relief due to addiction in some who take narcotics for a long period of time.
Dan Abshear
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