I'm not saying that everything has to be surgically repaired. Whatever the surgeons decide to do I'm cool with 99.9% of the time.

Its just that there are people who "should" have surgery who "can't" have it because money.

Another issue is that just because a doctor advises you to take opioids doesn't mean that you're not abusing them. Doctors tell you to do all kinds of things that are bad for you because they are the lesser evil. The prime example being chemotherapy.

The primary use-case of morphine-like substances is to treat acute pain. Taking any kind of opioid for prolonged periods of time leads to systemic adaptation and you end up an "addict".

Is there data on this? Probably. Depends on what you want data for. The fact that america is under-insured when it comes to healthcare is well-established fact.

I don't buy "people take opioids because their lives are lame" - because its bullshit. There are drugs that are way easier to acquire that provide a lot more "fun". You don't start on heroin and then switch to vicodin, either. A heroin addiction is treated with methadone.

If you want a really clean "feel awesome" high, you want a benzodiazepine like Lorazepam. I had a prescription for that once. Popping one of those pills, you smile from ear to ear within seconds and experience pure bliss. If you intentionally try to have negative thoughts, you just laugh harder because it feels so ridiculous. If you wanted to "trick" a doctor into prescribing those, faking the necessary symptoms is really simple.

The drug industry has a pretty good grasp on how to engineer drugs to do one specific thing really well without causing a bunch of secondary effects. Modern painkillers are good at dealing with pain, without turning people into loonies. But opioids are opioids and if you take them indefinitely, you mess with brain chemistry.