By downloading this material, I acknowledge that it may be used only for personal use and personal education and that I will accredit RheumNow.com as the source and owner of this material. Commercial use or mass reproduction of this material without permission from RheumNow (info@rheumnow.com) is prohibited.
My assumption is that the PSAs on narcotics represented a segment with more severe uncontrolled disease therefor you’d expect higher health costs. Although possible but less likely is that there was indiscriminate prescribing of opioids which led to higher health costs. I believe that rheumatologists use opioids as a last resort so that this population probably had more severe disease