In this week’s newsletter, the Secretary notes:

“What’s often overlooked is that many seniors also experience this problem. During the past several decades, physicians have increasingly prescribed their older patients medication to address chronic pain from arthritis, cancer, neurological diseases, and other illnesses that are often more common later in life. What we are beginning to see is that at times, those prescribed opioids hurt more than they help – while they decrease the pain at first, over time, the pills have less and less effect, and patients need to take more and more to manage the pain. In the past 20 years, the rate of hospitalization among seniors that is related to opioid overuse has quintupled.”

Click here to download the newsletter as a .pdf file.