The Libby Interview
Embarking on The PAIN GAME Journey
I’m posting below a 10-minute excerpt from Erica’s 2004 interview with Prof. Ronald T. Libby of the University of North Florida. As I described in our introductory post The OxyContin Thing, it was Prof. Libby’s research that first inspired Erica to start reporting on unjust prosecutions of healthcare providers for healthcare fraud and illegal prescribing. From there, Erica went on to film The PAIN GAME, covering cases and events stretching beyond 2008, when Prof. Libby’s book, The Criminalization of Medicine: America’s War on Doctors was published.
Prof. Libby is not a physician or a pain patient. He is an academic whose research unexpectedly landed him in Pain World, which he found puzzling and disturbing — as he explains in this excerpt that we originally developed for the Quarter Turn Media website. As we journey though Pain World ourselves in the coming posts, we will see more clips from the Libby interview in which he explains some of the legal and policy underpinnings of the Fisher/Miller case and the Comprehensive Care case. Prof. Libby also appears on two expert panels that place the ongoing cases into their historical and political contexts.
I’ve explained how I came to the project that would become The PAIN GAME in the articles Right Too Soon, about Siobhan Reynolds, and Man of Pain, about Sean Greenwood. With these pieces, and with this post, I am establishing the beginning of our timeline. At its core, The PAIN GAME is a history. Publishing it here on Substack allows us to begin releasing material we already have while we circle back and continue our reporting. Our audience is part of the project. We will travel this journey together: gathering our characters; exploring the medical, legal, and policy issues that arise; and occasionally stopping at scenic overlooks to ponder what it all means at the current political moment.
So buckle in! Next stop: the Fisher/Miller case of the mid-1990s.
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