How much is opioid addiction costing the United States?
A new study from Fair Health Inc., a New York City-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to health care, finds that medical services for privately insured patients dealing with opioid dependence increased 3,000 percent from 2007 to 2014. Specifically, medical services performed on such patients increased to 7 million from 217,000.
That figure is because of an exponential increase in the use of both powerful prescription painkillers as well as heroin. The two are inextricably linked, with a large percentage of heroin users having turned to the street drug after getting hooked on prescription drugs. It is often easier and cheaper to acquire heroin.
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