Comments on: Adequate Health Care Is A MUST For All People Struggling With Chronic Pain And Disability!

By: Bonnie Boots

Bonnie Boots — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:54:09 +0000

Sadly, everyone with chronic pain is told this by a doctor at one time or another. There’s no excuse for it!

By: John

John — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:56:31 +0000

The worst thing is to be told it's all in your head by a doctor, who took an oath to provide care to people.

By: Bonnie Boots

Bonnie Boots — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:59:43 +0000

I totally agree. And a doctor I recently spoke with suggested there’s a dark reason for the lack of funding for pain cures: a cure represents a financial dead end. It’s delivered once and then the need for it ends. Pain relief, however, can be sold to the same person over and over. It’s easy to see that a corporation is going to choose funding relief, rather than cure, because that’s where the greatest profit will be found. As long as corporate profits determine health care issues, we are all in peril.

By: david

david — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:12 +0000

I agree health care should not trample on human rights but when it comes to people with pain all too often the health care industry violates the prohibition against cruel and degrading treatment by allowing people to suffer pain needlessly. Infants in the ICU may receive 14 pain procedures a day- often without any analgesia. Elderly, woman, minorities and children often receive inadequate pain care- the federal government still treats pain care as unimportant as evidenced by very small funding for pain research at NIH, not requiring health care providers to receive any education in pain care-even though pain is the most common reason people seek medical care and by continuing to support biomedicine that merely treats pain conditions rather then cure or prevent pain. In a recent report by the mayday fund the cost of pain is estimated to be over 175 billion a year and worldwide i have seen estimates of over a trillion dollars-thats much more then cancer. But when I called the Presidents disability advisor he indicated he was not aware of the National Pain Care POlicy Act nor was Dr Pope at the Institute of MEdicine- even though the fderal government would have the IOM write a report on pain care.
So I agree with Bonnie -its up to us to ask our governemtn and the health care industry for better pain care. It is clear to me that government and health care industry continue to treat pain as unimportant and if it was up to them they will continue to maintain their longstanding prejudices toward those suffering pain and we wont see any substantive progress in apin care unless we get them to take it seriously.