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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.
The state judge ruled that drugmaker Johnson & Johnson contributed to the opioid epidemic that has claimed the lives of 6,000 Oklahomans.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don't have to.
Research out Wednesday indicates that guidelines are making strides in cutting back the number of pain pills doctors offer after specific types of surgeries.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don't have to.
Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee unveiled their long-awaited proposal to try to rein in prescription drug costs, even as bipartisan leaders of the other Senate committee that oversees health announced it would not bring its drug price bill to the Senate floor until fall. Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post, Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this, plus court actions on health issues.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don't have to.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden unveiled a health plan intended to provide a more moderate alternative to his competitors’ “Medicare for All” plans. It would build on the Affordable Care Act but would go much further. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Joanne Kenen of Politico and Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this, plus Planned Parenthood’s very bad week, the U.S. House vote to repeal the health law’s “Cadillac tax” on generous health plans, and the reduction in deaths from opioids.
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Oklahoma is seeking $17 billion in damages from Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant. After a seven-week trial, a judge will decide if the opioid drugmaker is liable and if so, for how much.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don't have to.
A new report by the inspector general for HHS shows prescriptions to treat opioid addiction are way up in recent years, while prescriptions for the painkillers have fallen.
Florida has struggled for years with opioid overdoses — and the highest rate of HIV infection in the U.S. Lawmakers now hope needle exchanges and a "harm reduction" approach could help save lives.
Many users now mix opioids with stimulants like meth and cocaine — and researchers believe opioids kicked off this new stimulant wave.
A new data analysis by KHN and Johns Hopkins researchers shows that even as the CDC issued warnings, surgeons handed out many times the number of opioid pills needed for post-op pain.
Even as awareness of the opioid crisis grew, prescribing habits of surgeons changed very little from 2011 to 2016, found a data analysis by KHN and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Use this interactive tool to search by doctor or practicing hospital.
The federal government has doled out at least $2.4 billion in state grants since 2017 to address the opioid epidemic, which killed 47,600 people in the U.S. that year alone. But local officials note that drug abuse problems seldom involve only one substance.
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
The widespread availability of naloxone, which reverses overdoses, has radically changed the culture of opioid use on the streets, giving drug users a sense of security and inducing them to seek out the more powerful high of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
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