Policymakers can reduce overdose deaths and other harms stemming from nonmedical use of opioids and other dangerous drugs by switching to a policy of “harm reduction” strategies. Harm reduction has a success record that prohibition cannot match. It involves a range of public health options. These strategies would include medication-assisted treatment, needle-exchange programs, safe injection sites, heroin-assisted treatment, deregulation of naloxone, and the decriminalization of marijuana.
Though critics have dismissed these strategies as surrendering to addiction, jurisdictions that have attempted them have found that harm reduction strategies significantly reduce overdose deaths, the spread of infectious diseases, and even the nonmedical use of dangerous drugs.
Canadian policymakers justify the prohibition on compensation with moral considerations and with concerns about the safety of plasma collected from paid donors.
However, 72.6% of survey respondents in Canada are in favor of compensating plasma donors. Among those in favor of legalizing compensation for donors, the highest-rated motive was to guarantee a higher domestic supply. The majority of the respondents who were in favor of legalizing compensation also agreed that compensation would not run against mainstream Canadian moral and societal values.
It also frees consumers from Obamacare’s price controls, which are eroding coverage for the sick. Instead, consumers can purchase consecutive short-term plans, tied together with renewal guarantees that protect them from medical underwriting when they fall ill.
As President Trump’s profligate spending, trade wars, and farmer bailouts undo whatever good his tax cuts achieved, and as the inhumanity of his immigration policies tear at the hearts of parents everywhere, this one rule at least should embolden others within the administration to push these and other federal policies in the direction of individual liberty.
Hospitals are working hard to ameliorate the situation by asking medical staff to use prescription opioid pills such as oxycodone and OxyContin instead of injectables, but many patients are unable to take oral medication due to their acute illness or post-operative condition. In those cases, hospitals use injectable acetaminophen, muscle relaxants, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, but those drugs fail to give adequate relief. Some hospitals have even resorted to asking nursing staff to manually combine smaller-dose vials of morphine or other injectable opioids that remain in-stock as a replacement for the out-of-stock larger dose vials. Dose-equivalents of different IV opioids vary and are difficult to accurately calculate. This increases the risk of human error and places patients at risk for overdose.
Here are the top five things to keep in mind about healthcare reform…
There will be losers as well as winners. Every piece of legislation creates winners and losers. Obamacare did. There were far more losers than winners, but some of those who won under Obamacare will be losers under the Republican plan.
There will be more winners than losers. Premiums would be lower under the GOP plan starting in 2020, about 10 percent lower by 2026. Plus, the more than $1 trillion in tax cuts — many for the middle class — and the $337 billion reduction in deficits over the next ten years mean more jobs and economic growth, a big win for everybody.
The alternative is Obamacare not utopia. Projections of how many people would be insured or what premiums would be ten years from now assume that Obamacare would survive that long. It couldn’t, not in its current form.
If you believe congressional Democrats, various special-interest groups and much of the media, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are about to be unleashed. Let’s all get a grip.
One of the first things most Americans are likely to find is that they’ll have more choices when it comes to buying insurance. You may have to pay more for insurance that covers some providers and conditions, but you’ll also be able to buy cheaper, less-comprehensive insurance if you want to.
People will even have the choice not to buy insurance at all, since the much-reviled individual mandate will be gone. Going without insurance may not necessarily be a wise choice, but it does re-establish a fundamental limit to state power over the individual. And it allows young and healthy people to purchase low-cost catastrophic coverage that makes much more sense for them.
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
