Pain Costs U.S. $635 Billion a Year: Report

The IOM report on pain neither has ane energetic vision to lower the prevalence of pain in the U.S. or an inspiring plan to help people in pain. It is largely old wine in new bottles with talk of improving education of public and doctors and finding more treatments-we've heard all that before-to no avail. They readily admit that pain is continuing to rise-and they have no credible plan or vision to cure pain. They dont talk about cures-they do mention that pain should be prevented but they dont have a detailed plan for such. They largely believe that people in pain should learn to live with it via self management or going to their primary care physician -failing that they should be referred to a specialist(even though there arent enough specialists to go around) or get multidisciplinary treatment- psychotropics, opioid rotation. Their ideas are underpowered and will do little to help stem the tide of suffering due to pain and poor pain care

david of NY 4:15PM June 29, 2011