So if the leading cause of death from the 18-45 year old group is opioid overdoses<p>and since abstinence only education is ineffective<p>and the culture could be updated to carrying naloxone to prevent said deaths, if people were actually willing to have a conversation that wasn't based on abstinence only<p>then.... this is a dumb and counterproductive policy? how much of the insurance pool is really affected? ... the narcan is to save your friends if you're there, this is like saying "there's a defibrillator nearby so since you might die, insurance denied" with a difference being that there was a purchase record. if an insurance pool is part of the calculation, would that difference matter? seems like you would need actual evidence instead of guesswork.
I skimmed it and I'm a little confused by a detail.<p>> She contacted her insurance agent and was told her application was denied because something on her medication list indicated that Isela uses drugs. Isela, who works in an addiction treatment program at Boston Medical Center (BMC), scanned her med list. It showed a prescription for the opioid-reversal drug naloxone, brand name Narcan.<p>> Isela had bought naloxone over the counter at a pharmacy, as can anyone in Massachusetts.<p>If Isela bought the narcan OTC and her PCP didn't know about it (aka it wasn't in the medical records), how did the insurance company find out about it?
YSK: Naltrexone, an anologue to Naloxone, can reverse alcoholism and food addiction. The process you need is The Sinclair Method. Naltrexone and Naloxone are opioid-antgonist<p><pre><code> 1. Take the naltrexone
2. Wait an hour
3. You know have about a 4-6 hour window you can drink.
4. Redose with a half dose if you need to drink more.</code></pre>
2 things come to mind, 1 - Employer based Group Life is often Guaranteed Issue upto a certain benefit. No questions asked. I write a ton of it.<p>2 - Did she quote any other carriers? Mass Mutual comes to mind... if not, sounds like the broker dropped the ball to me. Individual policies are tougher to underwrite.
More Typical Corporate Algorithmic Idiocy.<p>They assume that Naloxone prescription correlates with drug use which correlates with high death rates, therefor deny coverage. Yet this is literally a statewide prescription for <i>EVERYONE AND ANYONE</i>, but they ignore that fact, aaand collateral damage ensues.<p>Same as software and insurance companies assuming that high braking and cornering forces are automatically signs of bad driving when they are literally the hallmark of highly trained/skilled drivers (the difference is that the highly skilled drivers know where is the limit of adhesion and rarely exceed it while the ignorant teenager will often sail right past the limit of adhesion and slide into a tree or something).<p>Same as Google or Amazon deciding to ban all of a user's accounts for some reason that triggers some algorithm that maybe sometimes correctly identifies fraud or system abuse, but creates huge collateral damage when wrong.<p>It is pretty obvious that managers deploying technology either don't know or don't care about such consequences - they are externalizing their failures on the general population.<p>I don't know how to fix this sort of thing short of legally requiring companies to provide reasonable recourse and imposing costs if they don't (e.g., the damaged party can demand prompt & effective recourse and if they don't get it can <i>easily</i> sure and collect damages.)
I have a narcan prescription because of my oxycodone prescription. Interesting. It's short term so I should just wait before life insurance. It would be useful to have this stuff on a wiki somewhere.
What's weird is... cocaine can kill you, no OD necessary. Alcohol will kill you. Smoking national brand cigarettes will definitely kill you. Opiates generally don't kill you. Notorious addict and writer William S. Burroughs lived to 83, and died of a heart attack. His death had nothing to do with using heroin for 60 years or however long.<p>What hurts opiate addicts is the lifestyle, not the drug. But if they have a job and a stable economy, there is no health effect. What kills opiate addicts is two things.<p>1) The user quits, then maybe after a year of being clean, to celebrate perhaps, they take their regular dose again, and their tolerance has dropped to nothing, and they accidentally overdose. I believe this is how Sublime's Bradley Nowell died, and possibly Tom Petty.<p>2) Evil, sociopathic dealers that spike their heroin with fentanyl, likely aware they will kill someone, because they think it is good advertising, letting everyone know their stuff is strong. I believe this is how we lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, and many many others.<p>So even beyond the obvious detail, that Naloxone saves lives, I don't understand what life insurance companies have against opiate addicts, and more so than smokers and drinkers? That makes no sense.