drugs are as american as apple pie

I was reading an article on CNN and its headline was "Drugs are as American as apple pie".  I thought that was a really good way to describe it.  It was about the heroin epidemic going on in the country.  Heroin is a lot cheaper than prescription drugs and so has become the drug of choice. Every ER in the country is dealing heroin ODs on a regular basis.

I got to thinking...with all the escalating emphasis on patient satisfaction,  it is playing right into the dealers hands.

There is a lot of talk these days of prescription drug abuse.  How it is completely out of control.  Who writes the prescriptions?  Doctors of course.  They are under pressure to stop giving out so many scripts.  On the other hand, there is this patient satisfaction sweepstakes.  Patients feeling about their experience at the doctors office and hospital is now being closely monitored.  Payments are being linked to their opinions.  Result: Give the patients what they want so they won't complain = given them a prescription for narcs.

What happens then?  A certain percentage get hooked on pain pills. Pain pills are too expensive on the streets.  Heroin is cheaper.   People get hooked on heroin.  Dealers make out like bandits.

Little white suburban Brittany and Dylan are now smoking heroin so, of course, America sits up and takes notice.  Mommy and daddy are stunned.  This isn't supposed to happen in our American dream subdivision.

The thing mommy and daddy don't realize is that their own government has become complicit in our growing drug problem in its supposed reforms of our health care system.