In 2004, as Purdue Pharma, a company known as the maker of OxyContin, one of the many drugs abused in the opioid epidemic in the United States, was facing a threat to its sales due to rising lawsuits against it, Satel wrote an op ed for the New York Times arguing that law enforcement was being overzealous, that patients require large doses of opioids to relieve pain, and that OxyContin is rarely the only drug found in autopsies of oxycodone-related deaths but typically those addicted to it use multiple drugs. In 2019, ProPublica reported that Satel's employer, AEI, has received funding from Purdue. According to AP, Satel "sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors in her articles on addiction for major news outlets and occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance, including on occasions in 2004 and 2016." Satel responded that she was not aware that Purdue had provided funding to AEI and that she reached her conclusions independently.[4][5]
Satel is considered a political conservative,[8] a description she rejects.[9]
In her 2001 book P.C. M.D., Satel critiques what she sees as the burgeoning phenomenon of politically correct (PC) medicine, which seeks to address what its proponents view as social oppression by reorganizing the distribution of public health resources.[3] She argues that incorporating social justice into the mission of medicine diverts attention and resources from the effort to prevent and combat disease for everyone.[10]
Satel supports assisted outpatient treatment of gravely disabled psychiatric patients.[11] This is a type of involuntary treatment in which the person with schizophrenia or other serious mental health condition stays at home instead of being locked in a psychiatric hospital, but is required to take medication or other treatment.[11] She describes assisted outpatient treatment as "a form of civil-court-ordered community treatment for patients who are known to be self-destructive or dangerous when off their medication".[12]
Since 2004 she has written a series of opinion pieces in support of the medical prescription of opioids to relieve the pain of patients for whom nonsteroidalanti-inflammatory drugs and other interventions have proved ineffective. Satel acknowledges that such opioids have abuse potential. She points to data showing that people who abuse prescribed medications often have a history of substance abuse, or they are currently in psychological distress or have a psychiatric illness. She argues that data also show they are not typically pain patients who fell unwittingly into a drug habit: “When you scratch the surface of someone who is addicted to painkillers, you usually find a seasoned drug abuser with a previous habit involving pills, alcohol, heroin or cocaine. Contrary to media portrayals, the typical OxyContin addict does not start out as a pain patient who fell unwittingly into a drug habit.”[4][13]
She supports regulated third-party payments to living kidney donors (e.g., tax breaks or extra money for retirement), with the goal of increasing the supply of kidneys available for transplant.[3]
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