I Think Our Way Over Regulated Drug Prescription Policy is Ridiculous!

Great Debates
1

I mean I know what is wrong with me. I talked to a person that had the same thing got the medicine and now they are well. My doctor, on the otherhand, prescribed me amoxicillian(what else the ole standard fix all ya know) to cure my problem. Sure enough I still have the same problem and it hurts.

So I call my doctor and spend 40 minutes on hold(really)to see if he will call it in and sure enough he hasn’t. Why? I have no stinking clue. Probably because of his bruised ego don’t get me wrong I like doctors but I think needing a script for so many medicines is ridiculous.

Anyway, I think they should sell more stuff over the counter so we don’t have to spend so much extra money on seeing a doctor that might give us the wrong medication in the first place. After all, they spend what 3 minutes looking at you before they prescribe amoxicillian and then charge you $50. Boy, I got in the wrong racket huh? Instead, I could spend the afternoon asking questions on the GQ board and get answers from many many smart people for free. :wink: :smiley:

I know there is going to be a bunch of disagreement on this because of certain side affects of different medications but I think with technology we really are more informed than we use to be with computers, databases and all. Plus the info on the medications pretty much tell you what you should not take the medications with.

Also you could make people sign a waiver if they die or something they can’t sue the drug companies(if there was nothing wrong with the drug) just misdiagnosed.

Anyway, I think this is the way it oughta be.

2

Well let’s take anitbiotics for instance:

And let’s say we could go get them over the counter. Being able to get them in such a nonchalant way sends a message to patients that they can take them as often as they have the money to buy them. I would guess that a huge percent of the patients would take them incorrectly thus not killing the original bug and helping to build immunity to whatever disease they may have. This would also help in developing the “super bug” that the medical field says is imminent. The one that no anitbotic can kill because it will be resistant to any antibotic we now posess.

Then there are cases like my dentist told me about. Seems there was this truck driver that was addicted to pain killers. So he goes to a dentist with an impacted tooth. The dentist prescribes him antibiotics and pain medication. He takes just enough of the antibiotics to tone down the infection and enjoys taking all of the pain pills. After the antibiotics are gone he lets the tooth take a turn for the worse and visits the dentist again only this time it’s a different dentist. He gets the same antibiotics again along with more pain pills which is why he is at the dentist to begin with. I guess my point is that with prescriptions this guy and people like him can not work the system as easily.

3

Aha,

Agreed there are dummies no doubt about that. But there is also alot of people like ourselves that are smart :wink: that would get the proper information and dosage and follow it. The people you described seems like they would screw up even with the doctors script. So why punish the whole society with paying doctors because of a few idiots.

4

Well, of course, to start with, there is the case of personages who feel they are educated sufficiently… but are not.
Secondly, there is the tricky issue of drug interactions. OTC medications do not show up in your medical charts, and your reaction to them tends not to be noted.
Thirdly, OTC medicines are not covered by insurance, usually, and therefore, must be reasonably within the purchase price of the target consumer.
Fourthly, the human being is a rather difficult and complex organism. This is a new medication? Would you run out and buy Windows Millenium the first day it was released and install it on your only computer? There are different standards for adoption for different doctors.

Now, this is not to say that the FDA is not bit slow to release medicines, it is not to say that doctors are not wooed by drug companies and do, in fact, tend to listen to what they say…
This is not a condemnation of the doctor / drug company relationship, however. It is not the most rational or efficient thing, but it does give the doctor free samples of many drugs that he can prescribe to persons who would normally not be able to afford it. No, they don’t get much else, besides stationary supplies.
Perhaps that is what happened with your friend? His doctor happened to be visited by that vendor and had a sample of that drug, which would normally not be covered by your plan?
Or maybe it’s just that your insurance won’t cover it.

5

OK, lemme in here…

It’s like this:

  1. Self medication, even by educated persons, is flat-out dangerous. There are many cases of extremely well-trained doctors missing important (and often very subtle) cues, how will a non-speciallist stand a chance? Our self-medicator takes what he feels are the appropriate pharmaceuticals for what he thinks his condition is, doesn’t go see the doc, gets much worse, needs far more expensive treatment to fix what may’ve been a simple problem in the first place, or worse, gets dead. Additionally, when ill, one’s judgement is affected, and not in a good way.
  2. Drug interactions are strange things, and are not the territory of the layperson. Ditto allergies. Both can kill.
  3. Undisciplined use of such things as antibiotics has already produced “Super Bugs”, such as penicillin-resistant gonorrhea and penicillin-resistant streptococcus. Further, even less regulated, use will just make it worse.
  4. If you think strong pharmaceuticals are abused now, just wait 'till the reins come off!

If you want a really good scare, read this, from the first page I linked to, above:

Vancomycin is the antibiotic of last resort. If vancomycin can’t kill a bug, no known antibiotic can kill the bug.

6

Antibiotics are nothing to fool around with.
I have a friend who has to wear a medic alert bracelet because of a penicillin allergy. I myself developed an allergy to penicillin after having a few refills to fix an infected tooth-I broke out in hives all over.

Bill, it’s not that we don’t trust people, but these medications can be screwed with by the smartest of people. They’re very dangerous-for professionals, only.

Also, a lot of the doctors and their fees and such are not because the doctors are greedy-a lot of it is the insurance industry. (Nationalized healthcare!!!)
d&r

7

Originally posted by aha:

This is a huge problem in third world countries like Nepal where antibiotics are available over the counter.

8

Several good reasons to have regulations on medications.
First: People are stupid. If they think it will do something for them, they’ll take it no matter what it actually does in the long run and they’ll take it on the advice of friends, neighbors or people in the street.

Second: Side effects. Open up a new box of prescription medication and out pops this lengthy sheet of fine print listing something like a million possible side effects and conditions that, if you have them, you should not take the stuff.

Third: People are STUPID!: Look at the huge scam businesses going on now; magnetic bracelets, disks, pads, shoe inserts, boob enlargement pills, penis lengtheners, portable, healing micro-shock emitters, fantastic herbal cures and power crystals. Just like with over he counter pesticides, if a little kills the pests, then twice as much will do it faster and don’t read the warnings that tell you to use in a ventilated area and to wash you hands after use.

If a little antibiotic kills the infection, twice as much will do it faster, though Doctors know that the antibiotics have to reach a certain level in the blood, slowly and stay at that level in order to work properly over a certain period of time. Doctors also know that taking massive dosages of certain antibiotics will destroy your serious disease, but leave your immune system weakened so you’ll probably catch a slight cold within days of stopping the drug.

Paregoric: Great morphine based pain killer. Just rub it on the spot, or, for various stomach ills, drink a little. People liked it so much that they got hooked. Some boiled out the liquid in order to concentrate the morphine and get a bigger high. Now it is prescription only.

St. Johns Wort has a level of antidepressive chemicals in it which are far below the levels prescribed in major antidepressants. Plus other chemicals which can react with medication you take, yet people take it by the ton with no guarantee of steady levels of antidepressant included in every pill.

Gingko Bilboa: It’s an intelligence booster, that actually does not boost your intelligence but enables more blood to get to your brain, which carries more oxygen and nutrients. It does this by thinning the blood. If you are on blood thinners or take large amounts of aspirin, your blood can be thinned far too much. You can hemorrhage

People have this stubborn attitude of believing the lady down the street concerning pills that helped her over their own doctors. The Doctor might not prescribe you a certain medication because of your health, allergies, type of disease or existing physical conditions. A Good Doctor should listen to your requests and if he disagrees, tell you why. If he does not do that, then you might be better off finding another one.

9

Okay, allowing antibiotics to be purchased without a prescription is a bad idea, because it presents a potential danger to others (it can breed resistant bacteria if not used properly).

But for other drugs, why should we keep a drug from being available over-the-counter if its only potential danger is to the user? This sounds eerily like the seat belt laws: the government acts like a nanny, keeping you from doing risky things “for your own good.”

10

Nope, not “for your own good”, but for the good of my pocket. Seatbelt and helmet laws save money, and that’s the cold, unvarnished reason for their existence. If it didn’t cost taxpayers so much more money per accident (insurance not withstanding), then few if any laws would be passed on the subject. IIRC, in Maryland it was found to cost the state ~$50,000 more per motorcycle accident, after insurance payed up, if the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet. That was the justification for the helmet law. If people want to feel the wind in their hair, and bust their skulls open in accidents, so be it, as long as I don’t have to foot the bill.

Ditto for Ethical (prescription) Pharmacueticals. As long as it isn’t going to cost me or make my life more dangerous, go ahead and make the drug “over-the-counter”. Most drugs that can be made OTC, are, eventually, made OTC. If a drug ins’t OTC, it’s because it’s too new to understand it’s full implications yet, or in the considered opinion on the FDA, it’s too costly/risky to be made OTC.

11

Seatbelt and helmet laws? Good analogy because of guys like Gary Busy. He almost died in a cycle wreck from head injuries, took months to recover, because he dislike wearing helmets. So, after he finally recovers, he goes right back to riding without a helmet and speaks at meetings against them.

Well, DUH! Some folks need to be protected, which is why we have speed laws on our roads because people will blast through school zones at 250 mph, if not for cops, figuring that they are good enough drivers to not hit too many kids on the way through. They’ll happily drive the same on the highway, even knowing that at such speeds, in today’s cars, if they hit someone, the cops will be sponging their remains off of 100 square yards and the fire department will hose what’s left off into the grass.

A whole lot of drugs have a tendency to do harm as they do good. Lithium for one, you know, like in those metal long life flat batteries that warn you not to finger too much and to dispose of carefully (like in a nuclear waste site)? It’s a drug also, but when you take it, it can injure your liver really quickly and make you pour out body salts. So users initially require weekly blood tests to make sure there is no damage. Also, even on a low dosage of it, after X number of months, you have to be weaned off of it to avoid unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

No matter how you cut it, the average person is not all that mature, fixating on things only from their personal view and scattered knowledge and the ‘it’ll happen to someone else, but not me, attitude.’ You would probably be astonished at how few people actually read all of a precautionary label on a product.

It’s something like DDT. It took years to ban the lethal stuff in the USA because not only was it a great pesticide, it could kill generations of bugs, birds and animals for years, never exactly going away. But, some folks, making money off of it, got the laws warped enough to keep making the stuff in the US, to sell to foreign nations and happily poison them, not to mention the lands surrounding the plants and the watershed. See, they knew it damaged folks and since sales here went to zero, they decided to continue to ruin folks, birds, bugs and animals in other nations because they made money from it, deciding to let the buyer beware. Now, it is being banned internationally having done wide spread damage.

Can you grasp that type of mentality? If prescription drugs were not regulated, you can darn well bet drug makers would happily feed you coke, meth, Valium and other stuff not giving a hoot about what happened to you so long as you paid. So you have one mentality of a ‘never give a sucker an even break’ type meeting another mentality of the ‘I know what’s best for me’ form and, well, without regulation and laws, people would die in droves.

See websites on Patent Medicines and Snake Oil.

People arestupid!

12

Neon Frying Pan wrote:

Excuse me, but my point was that endangering yourself, and endangering others, are TWO DIFFERENT ISSUES!!

Laws that keep you from endangering others are, almost always, a good idea. Laws that keep you from endangering yourself reek of having the governmental be your “nanny.” It is my opinion, and the opinion of some others, that governments have no business passing laws against endangering yourself, even if such laws seem to be for your own good.

Yes, people are stupid. But I believe they should have a right to be stupid.

13

As long as their stupidity doesn’t impact me, fine.

So, those freedom-loving souls are costing me money. Their right to be stupid ends there.

As for Ethical Pharmacueticals, well, we’ve already discussed the risk of unregulated use of antibiotics, and how their use is putting everyone who enters a hospital (where you’ll most often find a antibiotic-resistant bug) at risk. What about the other prescription drugs? Here’s a short, all-legal-by-prescription, list:

Are you getting an idea of the size of the can 'o worms turning even part of this shortened list loose on the public would be?

14

ok…
so imagine we’re back in the 1960s, and i’m pregnant, and i can get whatever i want OTC. and i go and ask for something to make my morning nausea disappear. and i take the pills, and my baby is born with deformed limbs. and i don’t know why, and they ask if i took anything, and i say, “geee…i did, but you know, i think it began with a “T” but i’m not sure”.
get the point?

when a drug is newly released it’s released on a licence, ANY side-effect or reaction has to be reported.
so that’s why the list is a million miles long… someone somewhere happened to have a headache while taking the pills…so it’s on the list. you don’t do this, you don’t see patterns, you don’t withdraw harmful drugs.

and drugs like warfarin (anti-clotting agent, used as rat poison) has to be monitored weekly, if not more often to get the dose right.

there is a reason doctors spend years studying a subject called pharmacology, and it ain’t to make a buck.
unless you’d like to do the exams for me?
go on, the answer to every question is
“prescribe amoxycillen” or “tell them it’s virus and to drink plenty of fluids and keep warm”

15

Another issue that invalidates this point is the frequency of adverse drug reactions, allergies, and complications from interactions. This happens quite regularly with all of the monitoring in place now (doctors and pharmacists cross checking all prescriptions). Especially for the elderly, polypharmacy due to several underlying conditions becomes very tricky to manage. Our pharmacopeia is so vast that choosing one specific drug over another depends on a current knowledge of the most current scientific studies (and knowing which studies to trust), as well as knowledge of the drug interactions and side effects. More often, prescription information is based on extremely specific blood tests or cultures.

It is the government’s job to provide for the public welfare. This is just part of it.

Screw up any one thing, and you can end up in the hospital with often life-threatening complications. This leads to health care expenditure.

We have to come to grips with the fact that health care resources are limited. Laws should reflect that – an epidemic of overdoses draws resources (both physical hospital resources and health care dollars) away from those who really need it. An epidemic of traumatic brain injury because of the repealing of helmet and seat belt laws causes more insurance dollars to be spent on long term care – this means premiums go up and more people become uninsured or premiums stay the same and care becomes limited (no coverage for vaccines, etc.)

16

tracer:
If I misuse medication, and breed in myself antibiotic-resistant TB, suddenly I am putting everybody I come into even brief contact with at risk. It’s for their good, not mine, that prescription drugs are regulated.

17

Restricting access for antibiotics is vital, in some places medics are down to the last hope antibiotoc, vancomycin and when this fails we are in big trouble.

Past misuse of antibiotics, especially in the US, but also in much of the developed world has caused the development of MRSI but perhaps the most serious issue is the reistance of TB to anti-biotics.

TB is one of the opprtunistic infections associated with AIDS and is often the final killer, if we lose the effectiveness of Vancomycin then there could be an outbreak of TB which might be uncontrollable.

Drugs that reduce the effectiveness of the immune system need to be controlled too, overuse of some steroids can result in a person having to use antibiotics more, again with the risk of reducing their effectiveness.

18

To nitpick, vancomycin and Synercid are the last ditch antibiotics. MRSA (as in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), is often susceptible to vancomycin. VRE (vancomycin resistant Enterococcus) is a more severe problem (although it may be susceptible to methicillin or other antibiotics)…

Vanc is not used to treat TB. TB is treated with 4 very specific antibiotics (rifampin, streptomycin, isoniazid, and pyrazinamide). Drug resistant TB is resistance to one or more of these 4.

With all due respect, tracer did call for regulation of antibiotics. He just drew the line on other drugs in which the “only potential danger is to the user.” My point is that most drugs, if used incorrectly, can be a danger not only to the user, but to the health care system in general. This applies for prescription and OTC drugs, but the behavior of OTC drugs are generally more well known and usually the side effects are less severe (or more treatable, in the case of aspirin and Tylenol).

19

the prescription setup is costing me money every time i have to pay a doctor to give me the medicine i already know i need. so, freedom-hating souls are costing me money.

no cites for the costs of helmetless motorcycle accidents have not been given, but i’ll wager the cost to consumers paying for doctors to get prescriptions they know they need, outstrips the cost to the public by those riders by a difference in degree.

not wanting to weat a helmet is not stupidity, it is a personal preference. just because someone makes different risk choices than you does not make them wrong or stupid. you are not stupid simply because you would choose to hinder your hearing and peripheral vision while riding a motorcycle. well, maybe you are!? lo. it’s a matter of perspective and personal choice. you should not be able to choose for me, just as i should not be able to choose for you.

i buy my prescription drugs while traveling abroad. they come with long detailed info on usage, indications, and counter-indications. i read it and study it. nobody cares for my health more than i do, certainly not a doctor working too much and listening too little and not interested in me personally at all. am i stupid?? no, just an independent-minded individual, who makes all of her own choices.

do i wear a helmet?? most of the time. would i mandate it?? hell no!! lets hear it for the love of freedom!

20

And if your personal choice to use prescription medication encourages the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria or damages the health care system the rest of us have to use, then too bad, that’s our problem to worry about, not yours, right?