Feb 14 Federal HELP Committee Hearing on IOM Pain Report

On February 14 the U.S. Senate H.E.L.P. Committee will hold a Congressional hearing to review the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report on pain, Relieving Pain in American: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research. A little piece of Massachusetts trivia about this report.  The chairperson of the IOM committee was Philip Pizzo, MD, …

Limiting drugs to those who really need them

Will – while I appreciate the severity of this issue, as a practicing oncologist this bill would place significant constraints in terms of managing my patients. oncology patients frequently require long term narcotics, and I usually write several of these prescriptions daily. To stop and have to review each patient, every time, would be onerous …

Prescription Drug Legislation

I believe that addressing the problem of adequately treating pain, while at the same time trying to stop misuse of prescription pain medications, is something that the legislature can try to solve, but I am afraid legislation is more likely to cause harm than help.  Currently, health care providers are very worried about the consequences of …

MBTA proposals are socially and economically devastating

Dear Sen. Brownsberger: Are you taking a leadership role in fighting these destructive and short-sighted T proposals? The MBTA was deliberately left with a huge Big Dig debt and an inadequate funding stream, to support itself by exploiting helpless fare-payers. We need to remove the debt from the T, and create a proper state funding …