How the U.S. denies lifesaving medications to people with opioid addiction
For the last year, STAT has investigated the U.S. addiction treatment system — in particular, the fact that more than 80,000 Americans die of opioid overdose each year despite the availability of lifesaving medications like methadone and buprenorphine. We learned that for many people seeking treatment, these medications are extremely difficult to obtain. Barely one-fifth of Americans with opioid use disorder receive either medication, and we wanted to know why.
Nearly every layer of American society has worked either to restrict access to the medications or to sideline them from the country's response to the opioid crisis. Increasingly, public health experts and even government officials cast the country's singular failure to prevent overdose deaths not as an unavoidable tragedy but as a conscious choice.
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