Nearly half a million people in the United States have been prescribed too many opioid drugs. Individuals that were on Medicare’s drug plan received shockingly large amounts. Of those prescribed, individuals consumed dangerously powerful dosages of opioid drugs.
In this past year, 22,000 people had admitted to “doctor shipping” for drugs. Like overprescribing, it put both groups “‘at serious risk of opioid misuse or overdose,’ a government watchdog reported Thursday” (Bernstein, 2017, n.p.). According to the Inspector General’s office of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, people took drug amounts considered too large under the standards set by the Center for Disease Control and...
