I don't think what is happening with addicts should have anything to do with whether I'm getting my health care.
JACKSON, Tenn. – Rich Oberg doesn’t fit most people’s image of a drug addict, although he has been called one.
Sitting at a table in his spacious suburban home here, with nothing but woods visible beyond the two-story windows in the living room, he looks much more like the doctor he is, a 28-year-veteran pathologist at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, and a former medical examiner in Bradley, Meigs and Polk counties.
Nor does his wife, Holly Clowers, seem like someone who would be conniving to score pills to resell to addict buddies, although she has been accused of that, as well. She’s more believable as a graduate of the University of Alabama medical school and the Mayo Clinic who has spent the past decade treating patients with skin problems, including cancer, at the Jackson Clinic here.
But Oberg has psoriatic arthritis, a debilitating disease that leaves him in constant pain, while Clowers has been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos hypermobility syndrome, a rare condition that causes joint deformity and accompanying pain. Both believe they will need prescriptions for opioids, a class of drugs that are highly addictive, for the rest of their lives.