While the lack of treatment for the opioid epidemic is an enormous problem, one of the leading drug therapies to address the problem—Suboxone—is itself a troubling tale. It involves a little known, highly profitable pharmaceutical maker who, in September, was hit with a massive antitrust suit by more than 35 state attorneys-generals and tied to morphing the treatment drug into a contraband substance itself.
Medicaid, contraband, crime, and the prison system; The story draws together many of the themes of a tattered America—alleged corporate wrongdoing, out-of-control health-care costs, opioids and declining life expectancy, economic inequality, federal regulators, and mass incarceration. This is enough to get policy wonks and screenwriters alike salivating.
