By skyforbes 
CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is readying to implement new rules for opioid medication coverage starting the New Year, January 1, 2019. These rules have come under fire, as patients, advocates, and physicians across the country were outraged as CMS initially decided to cut coverage for all opioid pain medication prescriptions that were written in excess of over 90 mg MME (morphine milligram equivalencies) per day.
CMS apparently had decided this “arbitrary” number from the extremely controversial 2016 CDC opioid prescribing guidelines for chronic pain management. The funny thing about these guidelines — not a single agency has one time applied these guidelines as written.
Not one.
The guidelines were to be voluntary, applied to new chronic pain patients, not existing, the list goes on… the 90 MME number itself is arbitrary and meaningless, pulled out of the air.
Every patient utilizes medication differently. If we didn’t, we would only have one dose ceiling for every medication. Bioavailability, metabolism, absorption… a myriad of factors come into play every time a medication is swallowed or…