Something to highlight in this article is the prevalence of pain medication use among the out-of-work population: "Apart from the small fraction (around 13% in

Something to highlight in this article is the prevalence of pain medication use among the out-of-work population: "Apart from the small fraction (around 13% in 2015) of prime-age male non-workers who are adult students, the remainder report spending many of their waking hours watching and playing on screens — over 2,000 hours per year on average. Almost half of these non-working men report taking pain medication on any given day (which should raise a red flag for those worried about the opioid crisis)" The watching and playing on screens isn't ideal (2000h/y == 40h/wk on average -- which doesn't seem to leave a ton of room for a base level of healthy exercise and socialization) - but at least it is relatively harmless. But that half of these folks would take pain medication on a daily basis seems staggering. The author seems to correlate this abuse with the availability of opioids via Medical and Medicare. That does seem like a problem. However, reading further into the blog of the quoted author[0], that writer (who visited many affected areas during their research) attributes it to the private sector pushing opioids heavily. Personally it seems fairer to attribute most of the cause to the private industry which made the painkillers popular and mainstream, as opposed to Medicare and Medicaid, which functioning as desired should be making all healthcare more accessible (with the unfortunate inclusion of opioids as a dangerous subset of that). [0] - http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2016/11/21/donald-trump-opiates-america/ http://samquinones.com/reporters-blog/2016/11/21/donald-trum...