Healthcare professionals encounter chronic pain in nearly every practice setting. Whether it is the patient in your exam room, a colleague struggling silently, or a family member whose life has been upended, the reality is stark: chronic pain touches us all, often with fewer than two degrees of separation.
More than 60 million U.S. adults live with pain lasting longer than three months – frequently described as burning, shooting, squeezing, stinging, or other dysesthetic sensations. This condition frequently co-occurs with significant psychological and functional burdens, including anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, and mood instability. Common etiologies include trauma, diabetic neuropathy, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, and numerous other underlying diseases.
For many years, opioids have been a primary pharmacologic option for long-term management. Yet we know all too well the attendant risks of dependence, misuse, overdose, and the broader societal toll of the opioid crisis. Safe, effective non-opioid alternatives remain limited, leaving both patients and prescribers with too few evidence-based choices.
Over the past 15 years, financial and administrative barriers – most notably step therapy mandates and prior authorization requirements – have repeatedly forced patients through suboptimal or ineffective treatments before they can try another therapy, have tied the hands of healthcare professionals and patients alike. These policies not only delay relief and worsen outcomes; they also discourage investment in innovation. The result has been a stagnant pipeline and reluctance among biotech and pharmaceutical companies to pursue high-risk development programs in chronic pain.
Encouragingly, progress is underway. Academic researchers, biotech startups, and established pharmaceutical companies are advancing novel non-opioid investigational agents through clinical trials. The FDA has demonstrated renewed commitment by streamlining certain approval pathways for therapies addressing this profound unmet need. Importantly, success by any of these programs benefits the entire field; the demand for better options far exceeds what any single therapy can meet.
A bipartisan opportunity to transform care
Congress now has before it a meaningful, bipartisan solution: the Relief of Chronic Pain Act of 2025 (S. 3064). This legislation would remove key Medicare Part D barriers to non-opioid therapies for chronic pain by:
- Eliminating the deductible for qualifying non-opioid chronic pain management drugs
- Placing these agents in the lowest cost-sharing tier
- Prohibiting prior authorization and step therapy requirements
These targeted reforms would enable faster, more equitable access to FDA-evaluated therapies with demonstrated safety and efficacy. The downstream benefits extend well beyond individual patients: improved quality of life, reduced psychological comorbidity, greater workforce participation, lower rates of long-term disability, and meaningful reductions in overall health care expenditures.
As health care professionals, we are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between unmet clinical need and policy change.
Practical steps you can take today
- Contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives – Share your firsthand clinical experience. Describe how current coverage barriers delay effective care, prolong suffering, and force reliance on less desirable options. Personal stories from the front lines carry particular weight with lawmakers.
- Urge immediate support and passage of the Relief of Chronic Pain Act (S. 3064) without delay.
Chronic pain is rarely more than two degrees of separation away. When it affects our patients, colleagues, or loved ones – or ourselves – the stakes are deeply personal. By lending our professional voices to this legislation, we can help create the market and policy conditions necessary for meaningful innovation and, ultimately, better outcomes for the tens of millions of Americans living with this debilitating condition.
Photo – boygovideo, Getty Images
To sign and share the associated petition to demonstrate broad, cross-specialty support from the medical community and amplify momentum, please click here.
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