Chronic pain treatment has become a $635 billion a year “biz” in the US. More is spent per year on low back pain, neck pain, spinal disorders, headaches, arthritic and musculoskeletal pain and other pain conditions than on heart disease ($309 billion), cancer ($243 billion), and diabetes ($188 billion)! No one would complain about the cost if patients were getting better. But the sad fact is the $635 billion spent every year is being misspent because, despite a flood of narcotics, failure-prone surgeries and new, expensive procedures, pain patients are not getting better. They are getting worse and often becoming lifelong patients. Pain conditions now represent $11.6 to $12.7 billion a year in the US in lost work days, with many workers not returning to their jobs at all, How do we get to this state of affairs?
The problem is the maze of government and insurance red tape and clueless decision-makers which I call the “Healthocracy.” It over-screens and over-treats pain conditions, benefiting the medical device, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries a lot more than patients. By focusing on short-term treatments at the expense of long-term solutions, the Healthocracy creates a wide swathe of permanent patients that is growing every day. In fact, despite the 300 percent increase in the Healthocracy of narcotics, surgeries, devices and epidural and facet injections, the number of Americans suffering from chronic pain has risen from 50 million in 1990 to 100 million today. Yes, we are getting worse.
