9 ms·

Opioid epidemic costs West Virginia $8.8B annually, study says

79 points by SQL2219 9y ago

UncleEntity 9y ago
881 deaths == $331 million in lost productivity due to overdose deaths? That's like $375k per person or something.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Maybe these are the numbers the lawyers suing big pharma on behalf of WV came up with?
  - jsoc815 9y ago
    You aren't entirely wrong to have questioned the source(s)/motivations behind these numbers. There are lots of competing interests afoot. And not everyone who is calling this issue a "crisis" or who is expressing "concern" is doing so altruistically. I know that having spoken to them personally. Your question is valid, not entirely sure why you were down-voted.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The figure appears to include the current year economic impact of deaths in previous years. There's a bunch of write ups of the talk the article is based on: https://academicmediaday.wvu.edu/media-coverage https://academicmediaday.wvu.edu/media-coverage This is the best one I looked at: http://www.timeswv.com/news/opioid-use-hurts-state-s-economy/article_292bcbe0-ce7e-11e7-92de-77c9c04a02e9.html http://www.timeswv.com/news/opioid-use-hurts-state-s-economy...
- username8884547 9y ago
  someone has to raise their kids, support their families? Also there's a loss on taxes. BUT, on the "positive" side, they die early, no SS or medical expenses. An overdose and all is settled.
  - jsoc815 9y ago
    > someone has to raise their kids, support their families? Not asking rhetorically, but do you think that this is a pressing concern for many addicts? >on the "positive" side, they die early, no SS or medical expenses... It's funny that you raise this point. Last year I had a conversation w/a big name researcher who has been "studying" the Opioid 'crisis' as part of a broader matter. He agreed that the prospects (social and financial mobility, etc...) of many of those who are affected wouldn't likely improve much even if Opioids were taken out of the equation. He stated, yes actually said, that alcohol would be a preferred vice because "One can live a pretty good life as an alcoholic." I don't have any experience as an alcoholic, so I can't say, but I think the comment and the ease with which the researcher made it are telling of a greater issue.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Your widow/er can still collect.
    - ridgeguy 9y ago
      As can your children under some circumstances.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  The costs of the opiate epidemic aren't limited to deaths. E.g. when people get HIV or Hep C through needle sharing, that costs millions of dollars per person to treat.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The new drugs for Hep C have a pretty high cure rate and cost less than $100,000. So that's changed in the last few years.
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      > The new drugs for Hep C have a pretty high cure rate and cost less than $100,000. And yet what percentage of the prison population has it? Last time I checked, treating everyone would be so expensive that it isn’t even on the table.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        Good question. This article has some numbers: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/prisoners-with-hep-c-get-cured-in-some-states-but-not-others/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/prisoners-with-hep-c-ge... A lot of states are providing treatment to those with liver damage (which in the context of the thread means that they are likely reducing costs vs treating the chronic disease). I guess $33 billion is too expensive to get popular support, but it really isn't that much money, especially if the reduction in future infections is taken into account.
        Alex3917 9y ago
        > I guess $33 billion is too expensive to get popular support, but it really isn't that much money Especially when even a small bridge costs a billion dollars these days, e.g.: https://ctviewpoints.org/2016/11/08/the-billion-dollar-bridge-really/ https://ctviewpoints.org/2016/11/08/the-billion-dollar-bridg...
- Theodores 9y ago
  To take an automotive analogy it is a bit like a major big manufacturer and how that as well as the headline jobs there are also jobs in suppliers and other local companies down to corner shop level. The opioid epidemic is like that in reverse. It takes a while to overdose, before that there is a long journey of addiction, albeit not that long a period of time, more akin to the amount of time needed to do a university degree. So the 'fun' starts at a party somewhere and soon the unlucky addict to be is buying and not just trying. This leads to a period of health problems leading to dismissal at work. During the last year of this 'work' they will not have added value to the company and may have cost many sales or other opportunities. Soon there will be a draw down of funds from concerned friends and relatives, so the savings of others will also go to this, 'enabling' by paying rent checks and such like. During this decline there will be a lot of medical things going on - nasty infections and horrors that only go with the disease of addiction. Soon a circle of a dozen or so people will be affected, even if the addict did not have many friends. Eventually these friends are cut off and only the drug scene exists. Sources of revenue then become stealing and prostitution. There is also supply of drugs, dealing. Initially this may be for the party friends but then that is even more of a drain on the local economy as those party friends also have to come up with money. Along the way there will be car crashes, so those cars don't go back on the road like company cars do, these people are no longer buying gas. There will be police time with these car crashes, plus insurance and a whole lot of court misery. With no vehicle but still needing to travel the addict then becomes likely to have things like bike crashes and strange things happen to them on public transport. There may be prison or community service for some of this, perhaps some rehab that does not get adhered to. They may get lucky and get another job, to give things a fresh clean start. However, the addiction gets the better of them. By the time the company has expelled them on some health dismissal thing that had to be tip-toed around, they will have wasted a year on getting anyone useful in that role. There can also be some temping work done, but really it is very difficult for an addict to hold down a job. The inevitable end can be spared with a miracle birth of a baby and the mother going serious about rehab. Some people are able to move away to another country or somewhere and rebuild their lives, this does not mean they will be adding to the $$$ of the local community. Although death is inevitable, there is no way the headline figures reflect on the reality. For instance, an addict may be self medicating for some genuine physical pain that is only getting worse as they get older. So on their death certificate it mentions the other disease and not the addiction disease. They die of a heart attack, not smoking. Or in a car crash from a smashed brain, not because they had smashed their brain on heroin causing them to smash their brain around an A pillar. At any one time there are many addicts going through the phases of doing things they said they would never do. In a given year, for the 881 folks dying officially, there are so many more, all of them directly costing their employers, their friends, their families, health services and so on. These are the fluffy costs. Imagine the addicts that have moved on to stealing or selling their bodies. Once quiet neighbourhoods then become involved in an arms race of security upgrades yet still that person that is now an addict finds opportunity in the area every time they need a fix. If people have had their cars broken into and all their hobby toys stolen then they find that stuff wasn't insured and don't buy it again. It's gone. Then there are those children in single parent families where the parent is an addict. Other inlaws that could be working have to do the looking after. All of this is a huge toll on a community. I take the cost given seriously and can see how even with a relative few people the cost can spiral.
- shams93 9y ago
  There's way more at play than the loss of productivity of one person. Entire families are impacted, not just the addict. $375k in impact per addict? That could even be a conservative estimate from what I've seen with the impact growing up in the 80s. Everyone who comes into contact with the addict is losing so imagine 10 people per addict losing at east $37.5k and that's how you get that number.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jwatte 9y ago
Privatize profits, socialize costs. Works as intended!
- dang 9y ago
  Could you please not post ideological boilerplate to HN? It leads to flamewars and lowers the quality level below what we're hoping for here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lerie82 9y ago
I suck at math but with the help of google it says west virginia's gdp is 57 million, and 12% of that is around 6 not 8, so i stopped reading the article as I am positive more unreal facts are presented, but im an asshole so maybe it's just me.
Maarten88 9y ago
I was in the US recently and watched some TV in my hotel room. I noticed that half the commercials seem to be for prescription drugs, trying to convince people to "talk to their doctor" about using some drug to fix some vague inconvenience. I am happy it is illegal to advertise prescription drugs to the general public in the EU, it seems pretty clear this does not lead to good things.
- umeshunni 9y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/business/media/prescription-drugs-advertising-tv.html?mtrref=www.google.com https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/business/media/prescripti... “TV ad spending by pharmaceutical companies has more than doubled in the past four years, making it the second-fastest-growing category on television during that time,” “The drug companies aren’t generally marketing to people in their 30s; they’re marketing to the 65-plus, and that’s the population that tends to still be watching television,”
- refurb 9y ago
  Why don't you look and see what the FDA says about it? I'll let you Google the study from the early 2000's. Most people who ask their doctor about a drug they saw on TV have the disease. Of those, a small percentage were undiagnosed, thus the TV commercial helped them with self-diagnosis. I'd say that's a good thing, no? Plus, opioids have never been advertised on TV, so you point isn't relevant.
  - akira2501 9y ago
    > Plus, opioids have never been advertised on TV, so you point isn't relevant. Yes, but products related to them have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxegol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxegol
    - fny 9y ago
      So what? That product reduces the efficacy of opioids so people can take a dump.
paulsutter 9y ago
West Virginia voted 70% for Trump in the election (and 70% for Bernie in the primary). Just in case anyone still thinks Trump was elected based on racism, or Russia, or whatever the media obsession this week, the truth is that life is a damn mess for a large part of the country that's been forgotten by the coastal elitists
- FreakyT 9y ago
  And such a result it just goes to show how brainwashed they are. Nothing's more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the EPA, Mexicans), when the biggest problem is yourself.
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    brainwashed? more like hopeless and desperate.
    - FreakyT 9y ago
      I'd say both are likely. Those who are hopeless and desperate are much easier targets for propaganda.
      - at-fates-hands 9y ago
        Which both parties paid in the billions to reach. In this heavily divided, partisan atmosphere, no amount of propaganda (Russian or otherwise) is going to make someone living in the rust belt vote for someone like Clinton. Likewise, no amount of propaganda (Russian or otherwise) is going to convince some hipster startup founder in the SF bay area to vote for someone like Trump.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulsutter 9y ago
    > Nothing's more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the EPA, Mexicans) Did you catch that they voted 70% for Bernie?
at-fates-hands 9y ago
Thing that saddens me is this article goes to great lengths to talk about the economic impact on the state, without so much as try and pinpoint the REASON they have such a huge problem with opioids. This is the only paragraph on one of the probable causes: In 2012, then-state Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed lawsuits against more than a dozen drug wholesalers, accusing the companies of fueling West Virginia’s drug problem by shipping an excessive number of pain pills to the state. The lawsuit alleged that the drug problem cost the state $430 million a year, and projected that those costs would rise to $695 million by 2017. So they're suing drug companies not because an excessive amount of people are dying, it's because it's costing the state $600+ million? - How about pumping a few billion into treatment centers so people have a way out instead of jumping from pain pills to heroin to fentanyl and then ODing on fentanyl? - How about pumping a few billion dollars into finding and developing new methods to combat chronic pain? This would include alternative methods and such things like CBD oils or making medicinal marijuana legal in all 50 states? - How about imposing stricter limits on what doctors can prescribe or just banning the drugs all together? - How about making billions of federal money available to states to try give them additional resources to combat the root problem instead of just adding more police officers to put non-violent addicts in jail? There's so many things we could be doing and yet, nobody is really doing anything about it. As soon as you start talking about this as an economic issue, you totally lose me. This is about real people and you shouldn't be concerned about the economic impact to your state, since that's not the root of the cause. Fix the root causes (there are many) and those economic issues will fix themselves.

79 points by SQL2219 9y ago

UncleEntity 9y ago

881 deaths == $331 million in lost productivity due to overdose deaths? That's like $375k per person or something.

mythrwy 9y ago
Maybe these are the numbers the lawyers suing big pharma on behalf of WV came up with?
- jsoc815 9y ago
  You aren't entirely wrong to have questioned the source(s)/motivations behind these numbers. There are lots of competing interests afoot. And not everyone who is calling this issue a "crisis" or who is expressing "concern" is doing so altruistically. I know that having spoken to them personally. Your question is valid, not entirely sure why you were down-voted.
maxerickson 9y ago
The figure appears to include the current year economic impact of deaths in previous years. There's a bunch of write ups of the talk the article is based on: https://academicmediaday.wvu.edu/media-coverage https://academicmediaday.wvu.edu/media-coverage This is the best one I looked at: http://www.timeswv.com/news/opioid-use-hurts-state-s-economy/article_292bcbe0-ce7e-11e7-92de-77c9c04a02e9.html http://www.timeswv.com/news/opioid-use-hurts-state-s-economy...
username8884547 9y ago
someone has to raise their kids, support their families? Also there's a loss on taxes. BUT, on the "positive" side, they die early, no SS or medical expenses. An overdose and all is settled.
- jsoc815 9y ago
  > someone has to raise their kids, support their families? Not asking rhetorically, but do you think that this is a pressing concern for many addicts? >on the "positive" side, they die early, no SS or medical expenses... It's funny that you raise this point. Last year I had a conversation w/a big name researcher who has been "studying" the Opioid 'crisis' as part of a broader matter. He agreed that the prospects (social and financial mobility, etc...) of many of those who are affected wouldn't likely improve much even if Opioids were taken out of the equation. He stated, yes actually said, that alcohol would be a preferred vice because "One can live a pretty good life as an alcoholic." I don't have any experience as an alcoholic, so I can't say, but I think the comment and the ease with which the researcher made it are telling of a greater issue.
- hinkley 9y ago
  Your widow/er can still collect.
  - ridgeguy 9y ago
    As can your children under some circumstances.
Alex3917 9y ago
The costs of the opiate epidemic aren't limited to deaths. E.g. when people get HIV or Hep C through needle sharing, that costs millions of dollars per person to treat.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The new drugs for Hep C have a pretty high cure rate and cost less than $100,000. So that's changed in the last few years.
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    > The new drugs for Hep C have a pretty high cure rate and cost less than $100,000. And yet what percentage of the prison population has it? Last time I checked, treating everyone would be so expensive that it isn’t even on the table.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Good question. This article has some numbers: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/prisoners-with-hep-c-get-cured-in-some-states-but-not-others/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/prisoners-with-hep-c-ge... A lot of states are providing treatment to those with liver damage (which in the context of the thread means that they are likely reducing costs vs treating the chronic disease). I guess $33 billion is too expensive to get popular support, but it really isn't that much money, especially if the reduction in future infections is taken into account.
      - Alex3917 9y ago
        > I guess $33 billion is too expensive to get popular support, but it really isn't that much money Especially when even a small bridge costs a billion dollars these days, e.g.: https://ctviewpoints.org/2016/11/08/the-billion-dollar-bridge-really/ https://ctviewpoints.org/2016/11/08/the-billion-dollar-bridg...
Theodores 9y ago
To take an automotive analogy it is a bit like a major big manufacturer and how that as well as the headline jobs there are also jobs in suppliers and other local companies down to corner shop level. The opioid epidemic is like that in reverse. It takes a while to overdose, before that there is a long journey of addiction, albeit not that long a period of time, more akin to the amount of time needed to do a university degree. So the 'fun' starts at a party somewhere and soon the unlucky addict to be is buying and not just trying. This leads to a period of health problems leading to dismissal at work. During the last year of this 'work' they will not have added value to the company and may have cost many sales or other opportunities. Soon there will be a draw down of funds from concerned friends and relatives, so the savings of others will also go to this, 'enabling' by paying rent checks and such like. During this decline there will be a lot of medical things going on - nasty infections and horrors that only go with the disease of addiction. Soon a circle of a dozen or so people will be affected, even if the addict did not have many friends. Eventually these friends are cut off and only the drug scene exists. Sources of revenue then become stealing and prostitution. There is also supply of drugs, dealing. Initially this may be for the party friends but then that is even more of a drain on the local economy as those party friends also have to come up with money. Along the way there will be car crashes, so those cars don't go back on the road like company cars do, these people are no longer buying gas. There will be police time with these car crashes, plus insurance and a whole lot of court misery. With no vehicle but still needing to travel the addict then becomes likely to have things like bike crashes and strange things happen to them on public transport. There may be prison or community service for some of this, perhaps some rehab that does not get adhered to. They may get lucky and get another job, to give things a fresh clean start. However, the addiction gets the better of them. By the time the company has expelled them on some health dismissal thing that had to be tip-toed around, they will have wasted a year on getting anyone useful in that role. There can also be some temping work done, but really it is very difficult for an addict to hold down a job. The inevitable end can be spared with a miracle birth of a baby and the mother going serious about rehab. Some people are able to move away to another country or somewhere and rebuild their lives, this does not mean they will be adding to the $$$ of the local community. Although death is inevitable, there is no way the headline figures reflect on the reality. For instance, an addict may be self medicating for some genuine physical pain that is only getting worse as they get older. So on their death certificate it mentions the other disease and not the addiction disease. They die of a heart attack, not smoking. Or in a car crash from a smashed brain, not because they had smashed their brain on heroin causing them to smash their brain around an A pillar. At any one time there are many addicts going through the phases of doing things they said they would never do. In a given year, for the 881 folks dying officially, there are so many more, all of them directly costing their employers, their friends, their families, health services and so on. These are the fluffy costs. Imagine the addicts that have moved on to stealing or selling their bodies. Once quiet neighbourhoods then become involved in an arms race of security upgrades yet still that person that is now an addict finds opportunity in the area every time they need a fix. If people have had their cars broken into and all their hobby toys stolen then they find that stuff wasn't insured and don't buy it again. It's gone. Then there are those children in single parent families where the parent is an addict. Other inlaws that could be working have to do the looking after. All of this is a huge toll on a community. I take the cost given seriously and can see how even with a relative few people the cost can spiral.
shams93 9y ago
There's way more at play than the loss of productivity of one person. Entire families are impacted, not just the addict. $375k in impact per addict? That could even be a conservative estimate from what I've seen with the impact growing up in the 80s. Everyone who comes into contact with the addict is losing so imagine 10 people per addict losing at east $37.5k and that's how you get that number.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

jwatte 9y ago

Privatize profits, socialize costs. Works as intended!

dang 9y ago
Could you please not post ideological boilerplate to HN? It leads to flamewars and lowers the quality level below what we're hoping for here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lerie82 9y ago

I suck at math but with the help of google it says west virginia's gdp is 57 million, and 12% of that is around 6 not 8, so i stopped reading the article as I am positive more unreal facts are presented, but im an asshole so maybe it's just me.

Maarten88 9y ago

I was in the US recently and watched some TV in my hotel room. I noticed that half the commercials seem to be for prescription drugs, trying to convince people to "talk to their doctor" about using some drug to fix some vague inconvenience. I am happy it is illegal to advertise prescription drugs to the general public in the EU, it seems pretty clear this does not lead to good things.

umeshunni 9y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/business/media/prescription-drugs-advertising-tv.html?mtrref=www.google.com https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/business/media/prescripti... “TV ad spending by pharmaceutical companies has more than doubled in the past four years, making it the second-fastest-growing category on television during that time,” “The drug companies aren’t generally marketing to people in their 30s; they’re marketing to the 65-plus, and that’s the population that tends to still be watching television,”
refurb 9y ago
Why don't you look and see what the FDA says about it? I'll let you Google the study from the early 2000's. Most people who ask their doctor about a drug they saw on TV have the disease. Of those, a small percentage were undiagnosed, thus the TV commercial helped them with self-diagnosis. I'd say that's a good thing, no? Plus, opioids have never been advertised on TV, so you point isn't relevant.
- akira2501 9y ago
  > Plus, opioids have never been advertised on TV, so you point isn't relevant. Yes, but products related to them have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxegol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naloxegol
  - fny 9y ago
    So what? That product reduces the efficacy of opioids so people can take a dump.

paulsutter 9y ago

West Virginia voted 70% for Trump in the election (and 70% for Bernie in the primary). Just in case anyone still thinks Trump was elected based on racism, or Russia, or whatever the media obsession this week, the truth is that life is a damn mess for a large part of the country that's been forgotten by the coastal elitists

FreakyT 9y ago
And such a result it just goes to show how brainwashed they are. Nothing's more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the EPA, Mexicans), when the biggest problem is yourself.
- devmunchies 9y ago
  brainwashed? more like hopeless and desperate.
  - FreakyT 9y ago
    I'd say both are likely. Those who are hopeless and desperate are much easier targets for propaganda.
    - at-fates-hands 9y ago
      Which both parties paid in the billions to reach. In this heavily divided, partisan atmosphere, no amount of propaganda (Russian or otherwise) is going to make someone living in the rust belt vote for someone like Clinton. Likewise, no amount of propaganda (Russian or otherwise) is going to convince some hipster startup founder in the SF bay area to vote for someone like Trump.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- paulsutter 9y ago
  > Nothing's more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the EPA, Mexicans) Did you catch that they voted 70% for Bernie?

at-fates-hands 9y ago

Thing that saddens me is this article goes to great lengths to talk about the economic impact on the state, without so much as try and pinpoint the REASON they have such a huge problem with opioids. This is the only paragraph on one of the probable causes: In 2012, then-state Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed lawsuits against more than a dozen drug wholesalers, accusing the companies of fueling West Virginia’s drug problem by shipping an excessive number of pain pills to the state. The lawsuit alleged that the drug problem cost the state $430 million a year, and projected that those costs would rise to $695 million by 2017. So they're suing drug companies not because an excessive amount of people are dying, it's because it's costing the state $600+ million? - How about pumping a few billion into treatment centers so people have a way out instead of jumping from pain pills to heroin to fentanyl and then ODing on fentanyl? - How about pumping a few billion dollars into finding and developing new methods to combat chronic pain? This would include alternative methods and such things like CBD oils or making medicinal marijuana legal in all 50 states? - How about imposing stricter limits on what doctors can prescribe or just banning the drugs all together? - How about making billions of federal money available to states to try give them additional resources to combat the root problem instead of just adding more police officers to put non-violent addicts in jail? There's so many things we could be doing and yet, nobody is really doing anything about it. As soon as you start talking about this as an economic issue, you totally lose me. This is about real people and you shouldn't be concerned about the economic impact to your state, since that's not the root of the cause. Fix the root causes (there are many) and those economic issues will fix themselves.