The Dismantling of Pain Care by Addiction Medicine, And the Patients Sacrificed. A Decade of Harm.

This episode documents how pain care in the United States was dismantled, not accidentally, but through deliberate policy choices that elevated addiction medicine over pain treatment and left millions of patients behind.Bev Schechtman, Vice President of The Doctor Patient Forum (DPF), walks through the history of opioid policy, the rise of addiction medicine’s influence over pain care, and the real-world consequences for patients and doctors. This includes how clinical judgment has been replaced by fear, risk profiling, and enforcement-driven medicine.The discussion covers:How the opioid crisis narrative reshaped pain careHow CDC prescribing guidelines moved from recommendations to de facto lawHow litigation, settlements, and funding structures reinforced opioid eliminationHow algorithms, risk scores, and liability concerns now override patient careAnd why patient harm has never been measuredThe episode also includes a first-person account of being denied pain care in the emergency room despite documented kidney stones, not based on medical findings, but on trauma history and perceived risk.🎧 Source & ContextThis episode is drawn from a live X Space hosted by Dr. Liza Lockwood, featuring patients, physicians, and advocates discussing the realities of pain care under current policy.Watch full X-Space discussion: https://x.com/DrLizaMD/status/2009384856409506119?s=20💜 Support our work & access deeper discussions:https://patreon.com/thedoctorpatientforum📌 Share your story:https://thedoctorpatientforum.com/submit-your-story/At The Doctor Patient Forum, we preserve patient stories because harm was never measured, and history is being erased in real time.