You are studying Half 3 of The Conflict on Restoration, a yearlong investigation into how the U.S. denies lifesaving drugs to individuals with opioid dependancy. Learn Half 1 and Half 2.
Half 4 coming March 26
Personal fairness companies have acquired stakes in almost one-third of all methadone clinics lately, gaining outsize management of the U.S. dependancy therapy trade even because the nation’s opioid epidemic has developed right into a full-fledged public well being disaster.
A small handful of little-known monetary establishments now has an possession stake in 562 methadone clinics throughout the nation, in response to a first-of-its-kind STAT evaluation. And prior to now two years, massive clinic chains backed by personal fairness companies have launched a lobbying blitz geared toward preserving their unique proper to dispense methadone, a strong remedy that cuts the chance of opioid overdose loss of life by greater than 50%.
Personal fairness’s surging curiosity within the methadone therapy trade provides a brand new layer to the fraught and fast-shifting debate over entry to dependancy drugs. Presently, sufferers can receive methadone solely at a specialised clinic and often should return every day to obtain a single dose. However with opioids killing over 80,000 Individuals every year, a widening array of voices — together with lawmakers, sufferers, public well being consultants, and the American Medical Affiliation — desires to create methods to bypass the clinic system.
The clinics are pushing again forcefully, citing potential unintended penalties and security considerations about methadone, which is an opioid itself and may trigger sedation and even overdose when misused. However those that favor expanded entry see a unique motivation: the underside strains of company clinic chains and the personal fairness companies that again them.
“We’ve the physicians of America on our aspect, they usually have the MBAs of America on their aspect,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), an outspoken critic of methadone clinics and the co-author of a bipartisan invoice that may enable skilled dependancy docs to prescribe methadone on to sufferers with opioid dependancy, mentioned in response to STAT’s findings. “They don’t wish to give up the earnings that come from having a monopoly.”
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