Pain management during the Obama years

There's an interesting article in the WSJ about pain management and the dilemma physicians face regarding the dispensing of drugs to alleviate that pain. Who among the patients is really in pain or who is really just addicted to drugs? From the WSJ:

Evaluating patients' pain is posing a greater dilemma than ever for doctors, given two colliding health-care trends.

On the one hand, opioid painkillers—the most commonly prescribed medications in America—have become a major drug of abuse. With prescriptions up 48% since 1999, opioids are now the nation's second-leading cause of accidental death, after car crashes, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

  Why is this even being discussed? Obama has already said his drug czar guy wants to emulate the British health care system, which encourages "palliative care" over treatment in many cases.

  Obama has already said that granny should probably take pain meds rather than get the needed treatment.
  And who's to determine what pain is anyway? That stupid little "describe your pain from 1 to 10" test? Will pain be determined the way medical marijuana is? I can't sleep so I need to smoke?
  So why this concern about people being addicted to drugs? And aren't we all going to be on a network with our health care records exposed to the world anyway, ala Rush Limbaugh's observation that, if an opponent wants your health care records, somehow those records will be leaked and then used against you?
  So once again we have the paranoia of government regulations that target behavior that government has determined to be unacceptable.
  For example, does anyone really think that all the NYC anti-smoking Nazis will oppose the smoking of marijuana in a public place?
  Like I said.  
  Pain management in the Obama years is pretty darn confusing.