Research by the good folks at the California Workers’ Compensation Institute shows that opioid painkillers in California are at an almost all-time-high (get it? high? because of the drugs…) rising to almost 8% of all outpatient drugs dispensed to injured workers.  Among those prescribed are: Oxycodone, Morphine, and Fentanyl.

So why the spike?  Why are workers today getting more drugs?  Why are doctors today prescribing more?  Hasn’t medical technology improved to provide more treatment?

It’s also not like injuries are worse today than they were ten or more years ago:  there’s more safety equipment, more incentives to keep workers safe, and a lot of the dangerous manufacturing jobs are gone to states and countries that want to attract employers.  After all, as Frank Sobatka said, “you can’t get hurt if you’re not working.”

Well, your humble blogger is going to guess the answer boils down to money.  The doctors have found they make more money rubber-stamping prescriptions and limiting face time, or the employees have found they make more money faking pain and selling the drugs (or both).  After all, it’s a victimless crime (unless you consider the insurers paying for the drugs and the people illegally getting them to be victims).

The solutions are already there – employers insist on drug tests to make sure the employee is actually taking the drugs prescribed (whereas it used to be to make sure the employee wasn’t on drugs); or sometimes prescriptions might be given in smaller amounts more frequently, to require more frequent check-ins and supervision.

But it isn’t working – the opioid painkillers now make up 20% of the workers’ comp prescription payments, and those numbers seem likely to go up as time goes on.