Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, will no longer be covering the cost of addictive painkiller OxyContin.
As of January 2018, the firm will instead be covering Xtampza ER, an opioid designed to be difficult to abuse.
It is the most drastic move by any insurer to curb America’s addiction epidemic, which has led to tens of thousands of overdose deaths.
However, experts warn that even harder-to-abuse alternatives are highly-addictive – and the tests to analyze Xtampza’s deterrence was carried out by the manufacturer, Collegium.
