The United States has an opioid epidemic, but there’s one bright spot in the fight against it: Prescriptions for these addictive drugs have declined for patients with private insurance.
Amid guidelines over the past decade from governments, health systems and insurers aimed at reducing opioid prescriptions, previous studies have pointed to a nationwide drop in prescribing rates.
Patients who are actively receiving cancer treatments are excluded from those limits.
The new study included cancer patients as well as people with other chronic pain. It found that overall prescribing rates still dropped.
“We find that from 2012 to 2019 there were declines in opioid prescribing for individuals with chronic non-cancer pain and individuals with cancer without corresponding increases in receipt of non-opioid therapies,” authors Sachini Bandara and Emma McGinty of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and Dr. Mark Bicket of the University of Michigan, wrote….