text: This is a pseudo government created disaster. I remember the nonsense 10-15 years ago with the "pain is the 5th vital sign." At that time hospitals who were under the Joint Commission microscope were tweaked if they were not dumping pain medications on everybody. It spread to everything because those policies affected the ER. And guess what another game is patient satisfaction scores  and those are higher in institutions that prescribe more narcotics. When the measures used to judge push the use of narcotics guess what happens. Many of us resisted the ridiculous use of narcotics. There are some specialties that bought into it for financial reasons and a lot of the regulation was driven by those specialties and somewhat by big pharma but it was the policy that lit the fire. And that fire has spread elsewhere as the public latched on to it. Now people think they should never have any pain. Kind of goes well with the Bernie Sanders free stuff and all the trophies for last place.