Deaths Fall

Two sets of numbers came out in the past few weeks, and they point in opposite directions. Overdose deaths in the U.S. are dropping. Diagnoses of opioid addiction are climbing. If you work in drug and alcohol treatment in Panama City, as we do, you learn to read both at once, because each one leaves something out.

The Two Numbers

On October 14, FAIR Health, a nonprofit that tracks insurance claims, released its 2026 Opioid Tracker. Among commercially insured patients, opioid use disorder diagnoses rose 32.7 percent from 2022 to 2025. The rate went from 449 to 596 diagnosed patients per 100,000.

Over the same period, deaths went the other way. The CDC’s provisional data counts 67,798 overdose deaths in the 12 months ending March 2026, a 12.3 percent drop from the year before. Florida has seen the same direction. The state’s interim drug report for early 2025 showed fentanyl deaths down 46 percent.

A Diagnosis Count Is Not a Count of Everyone Using

The FAIR Health numbers come from insurance claims. They count people who were diagnosed with opioid use disorder by a health care provider and had it show up on a bill. They do not count everyone who uses opioids, and they only cover people with commercial insurance.

That matters for how you read the 32.7 percent. FAIR Health offers no explanation for the rise. Several things could push the number up without more people becoming addicted: more routine screening, less stigma about asking for help, and more clinicians who now document the diagnosis. A claims dataset can’t tell those apart. It also can’t tell you whether the real number of people with the disorder grew, held steady, or fell.

Who Is in the Data

Some details from the report stand out:

• Adults aged 41 to 50 made up the largest share of diagnoses, at 28.1 percent.
• Men accounted for 56.1 percent of patients and women for 43.9 percent.
• Tennessee had the highest rate in 2025 at 1,551 per 100,000, followed by West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Delaware. The release doesn’t give a figure for Florida.
• Nurse practitioners were the fastest-growing specialty, with their share of claim lines for these patients up 67 percent since 2022.

That last point is worth a second look. It suggests more opioid addiction care is happening in a wider range of settings and from more types of clinicians than it was a few years ago. For a family in Bay County trying to find a place to start, that is good news.

One Way to Read Both Numbers Together

One reading seems reasonable to us, although the data can’t prove it. If fewer people with the disorder are dying, more of them are alive to be diagnosed, and some of them are showing up in a doctor’s office. A drop in deaths tells you that fewer overdoses end in a funeral. It says very little about how many people still need help, and in a county like Bay, where a single bad week can change a family’s life, that second question is the one that matters.

Our own area shows why. In the Panama City medical examiner district, meth caused more deaths than fentanyl in the first half of 2025, even as fentanyl deaths fell across the state. The drug supply is changing, and so is the kind of help people need.

Good News With Unfinished Work Behind It

A falling death count is worth celebrating. It also tells us nothing about the person in your family who is still using, still hiding it, and still at risk on any given night.

If that person is you, or someone you love, the trend lines don’t change what’s possible for one individual. Our residential program for drug and alcohol rehab is in Panama City, and a call is a low-pressure way to find out what the options look like. The statistics are heading in a better direction. The next step is still personal.