NEW YORK (AP) — The Seattle Times’ investigation of the state of Washington’s practice of steering people to methadone to reduce its Medicaid costs won a Public Service award from the Associated Press Media Editors association.

In a three-part series, the newspaper’s “Methadone and the Politics of Pain” exposed how more than 2,000 people in the state between 2003 and 2011 fatally overdosed on methadone, a cheap and unpredictable painkiller that was routinely prescribed for people in state-subsidized health care. After the series was published in December, state Medicaid officials sent out an emergency advisory warning of the risk of methadone. The state also told doctors to prescribe methadone only as a last resort.

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