Help Protect Chronic Pain Patients

I am a severely chronic pain patient in San Diego, Ca. and I hope there also are changes made here to help us all out.

Please, do not force taper Chronic pain patients. I know this will lead to people who can't deal with the pain and may take their own life,I have witnessed it. Please reconsider and leave well established patients out of this.

Patients with chronic pain need access to the medical care that works for them. Some will respond to active therapy, many will not. To remove access to properly prescribed opioids risks plunging some patients into unnecessary pain and suffering. Surely that is not something the HERC wants.

Stop the State of Oregon from taking needed "Pain Medication" from people that need it the most.

Street drugs are killing people. Please dont punish pain patients for the united states failed war on drugs. We had no choice to be put in our situation. Please dont punish us further

I would that the writer of this letter had enlisted a proofreader, but agree entirely. This cruel, biased, and fanatic policy would devastate, and destroy innocent lives. Already it's notorious across the nation. Please, please halt this horrendous plan now!

10 years of trying alternatives to my pain. Much was out of pocket for us. I finally decided to try medication. My pain meds are a tool in my “pain management” not complete relief, but they help me maintain some kind of life and enable me to continue to try other therapy’s, which are also “tools” in my Pain management. Believe chronic pain patients when we say, “we do not just take our drugs and sit around high all day. We try to work, manage pain flairs, raise our families... live our lives.”

The chronic and intractable pain patients are being discriminated against due to the so called opioid crises. We (chronic and intractable pain patients) should not be put under the same hat as addicts. We have been taking and with very positive results opioid pain medication for years and have been able to function, more so than since we have been tapered off of our opioid pain regimen. We have been taking our pain medicine responsibly as prescribed by our physicians without any problems. The opioid hysteria is blaming the chronic and intractable pain patients and our doctors for adding to this opioid hysteria. We are fighting for our lively hoods. We were contributing members of our communities and active members in our families. Our lives have been destroyed by the 2014-16 CDC opioid guidelines. We have been forced to taper off the medication that was helping us live a more functioning life style. Our hopes and dreams were decimated my these guidelines that ended up being law in many states, and enforced by the DEA. We deserve a better life and we deserve better from our government to help the pain communities, the ones that do not have a voice! At least Nevada is trying to help their pain community by giving some of the rights and power back to the trained doctors in that state. I hope and pray our State and other states in our country will get on board and help save the disabled, unheard and tortured Americans in our State!

I am a chronic pain sufferer. Pain acceptance is a ludicrous notion. I am a tax paying, contributing memeber of society. Without adequate pain relief, I would lose my job, my family, and ultimately, would commit suicide. It is insane that people can make stupid laws to check the boxes on an agenda for which people will eventually result in high amounts of suicides. Who gets to meake these laws for people who take their medicine as prescribed and have a positive quality of life.

If Oregon takes the draconian step of banning Medicaid patients (the most vulnerable and poorest) from taking prescribed opiates, this will set a national precedence for all other states. Once insurance companies can point to a Medicaid denial model, they will no doubt implement a no opioid coverage policy as a way to save money and increase shareholder profits. I am certain they won't start covering alternative therapies because they are VERY expensive, if they help at all. The cookie-cutter approach does not work and is extremely damaging. I suffer from multiple systemic chronic pain issues. I have tried and paid for all of the other behavioral and treatment options you recommend. Opioids do practically nothing for me and only provide a modicum of relief when I take them at night to get two hours of interrupted sleep, at best.

Let the Doctors treat the patient

It is absolutely disgusting how chronic pain patients are now being treated!! As if we don’t suffer enough!! I cannot fathom why everyone cares more about a JUNKIES life than a chronic pain patients life!! Last I checked THEY CHOSE TO DO DRUGS....we never had a choice yet now WE’RE being punished??? IT IS INHUMANE TO LEAVE US IN PAIN!!!

Please do not penalize the Oregon pain and permanently disabled people it will sent a precedence for discrimination aginst the most variable US citizens many will be tortured while they die sooner then they need too and already are the mental abuse has added too all health issues for all pain and disabled people in America under the Constitution and the Geneva Convention we have a right too live as well as possible with our disabilities what will happen when more pain and disabled died due too these strict ignorant policies then the street user it will then be too late too go back and change things the blood of all the most vulnerable will be on legislators hands I know if you are not needing care as we do you may some day and that it is hard for you too understand what it is too be us I’m begging you too reconsider before it is too late bye putting a black mark on America’s history in the persecution of the disabled and pain managed in the USA

Those of us who suffer chronic pain are not addicts. We use our medications as prescribed and are able to lead productive lives. Please consider us when making decisions. We are not addicts.

Please offer a more balanced approach to this urgent problem. Do not tell people with genuine chronic pain that they are on their own after a limited number of sessions - of alternative therapies which may have not helped them in the past. Their pain is real. They could help you design a plan more fair to all. Thank you.

Don’t punish pain

this is wrong and will NOT solve the problem of those who choose to do the wrong thing.It will devastate and destroy innocent patients including in their DEATH. You will regret this if you choose this immoral action.

By implementing this restriction, you will cause detrimental harm to thousands of patients who suffer with unrelenting chronic intractable pain diseases that have no cure. By reducing/denying patients treatment to medicatications that give them relief is not only irresponsible, but cruel and inhumain. Many opioids provide great relief for thousands of patients that allow them to enjoy life, and return to work for many. By removing these medications, you will be taking away their right to live a better life. If this was you in this situation or your child, parent, or a family member who benefited from these medications, how would you feel? How would you feel if you had a dibilitating chronic pain disease as many of us do and you had medications taken away that gave you the ability to enjoy your family, and not be bed bound due to lack of proper pain care? To live your life confined to a wheelchair because your pain is to great to even walk, or be confined to bed with your body burning in pain knowing this is your life now because someone took away your only medications that helped you enjoy spending time with your children, grandchildren, or loosing your career that you loved? These are what chronic pain patients are facing because of the decisions you are choosing to make without even considering the damage you will be doing to patients who are forced to take the only medications that work for them after all other therapies have failed. We all have a right to have a better life. We have a right to enjoy life with our family, to have a job and be a productive part of society. By you removing these life saving medications, you will cause suicide rates to go up in chronic pain patients because they will be unable to live with the pain. Please research these conditions listed below as thousand of patients who are on these opioids suffer with these incurable diseases before you make this decision. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome A group of inherited disorders that mostl

Its getting out of hand. There are truly people who need these meds, but they should be monitored carefully is all. To force a taper will put a lot of truly hurt people bedridden instead of contributing members of society. DONT PUNISH THE PATIENT,SHAME ON THE BIG PHARMA COMPANIES!! Hope they laughed all the way to the bank. Geeze!!

These proposed changes are unethical, cruel and disproportionately target the poor, who are least able to effectively protest! Please reconsider!