the failure of the USA system of medical non-care

My eighty-four year old mother is in pain. She can hardly walk. She is not getting the care she needs. Recently she visited the family physician. He recommended against the pain

medication she was using, but did not recommend an alternative.

Did my mother ask him for an alternative? No, she told me, because at the time she felt sick and nauseous. She felt as if she had been poisoned. And, so, one assumes the idea of any medicine made feel sick....

If a patient is overwhelmed by pain or nausea, and therefore doesn't make a further step in their thinking, to ask what pain relief will be available if they cease taking the nausea-inducing drug, that is excusable.

But shouldn't a doctor understand that if a patient stops taking a needed

pain medication, the patient will need an alternative? Plainly, that is a rhetorical

question, but it seems to me that there is an error here.

And thanks to the way in which medical care is rationed out under the current system,

I am afraid my mother will be suffering needlessly for an unnecessarily lengthy period of time.