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Earlier Story: Lethal Drug Act Will Restrict Cancer Patients' Pain Treatments(Aug 98)
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Grassroots
Hyde Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act Defeated by Patient-Physician Lobby
by
Staff
January 9, 1999 Last summer, while caring for her husband Bill, who had prostate and lung cancer, Katherine Meade sent us a column calling for the defeat of the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act. We carried the story last August. Katherine Meade wrote:
Patients and caregivers must be aware that this will restrain physicians' use of pain management at all times, particularly during palliative care. It is likely to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship by restricting doctors from prescribing effective pain medications according to patients' needs. This is of special concern to cancer patients and those who care for them at the end of life.
Congress, we're happy to report, did not enact the bill. A coalition of 57 healthcare organizations opposed the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act on grounds that it would harm patients. Legislators backed away. Some co-sponsors dropped their support. The administration refused to include it in the Spending Bill.
The American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine (ACP-ASIM) helped lead the lobby against the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act. Harold C. Sox, their president, writes: "Ideology inspired this bill, and its chief sponsors didn't seem to understand our concerns about the harm it might cause. But we could also see its defeat as an uplifting civics lesson: Many legislators changed their minds when they realized that the bill could put their constituents at risk."
If you need reassurance about how much good doctors care about patients at the end of life, read Harold Sox's column in December 1998 ACP-ASIM Observer.
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