Although it’s directed to John, I’d say the the ammount of legal battles as to how much “customer’s cost”, “X%”, and “Y%” are going to be.
No, they won’t be insurmountable. If the medicine warehouse (or whatever) charges $12.50 for shipping, then ether the customer’s insurance covers it or she picks up the $12.50. X and Y shouldn’t be terribly hard to set, either. Remember, this is a business which is 100% dependent on government sanction in order to operate, a ‘state salary schedule’ type deal would hardly be unworkable, and at least a few states already have exactly that for teachers and similar government employees.
Or, of course, as I stated earlier we can do away with government regulation and you can let me sell pills out of the back of my car. Good deal, right?
The government (or the appropriate regulatory body) can set the conditions they want (even if I think they are wrong). Should these regulations pass any legal challenges, then pharmacies/pharmacists will have to comply or close shop.
But since the examples are always “poor woman, only one pharmacy, 100 miles from the next one, no car, no money for the bus, no time to go” then it also means that the despicable non-plan-b-carrying pharmacy is also the only stocking other OTC and Prescription drugs and that the effect of such regulation could be that the pharmacy closes shop and instead of no “no plan b” you have “no drugs at all”, which I imagine is the pyrrhicest of victories; Godforsakenville,ND is not a hotbed of opportunities for pharmacies to open.
A town with zero pharmacies does indeed present a business opportunity for someone to open one. People need medicine, after all.
Why is nobody bringing up the fact that Plan B has the exact same functions as other hormonal birth control? I know the religious nuts who refuse to stock Plan B are not exactly rational, but how could they possibly justify dispensing standard birth control pills, but not Plan B?
Wasn’t there a case of a pharmacist refusing to sell a medication needed to stop uterine bleeding after a miscarriage/abortion? And aren’t there pharmacists who use this same sort of “conscience clause” to refuse to stock birth control pills? I’d rather address the full scope of the problem rather than just act like it’s only Plan B at stake.
Yeah, this is the case I was thinking of (hurrying to get this in under the edit window):
Maybe Godforsakenville,ND is too small to make it economic.
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People who may be pro-life but no anti-pill. You simply can’t control evertything your customers do with the meds. They made OD with Tylenol or get a prescription for penicilin even if they are allergic because they want to kill themeselves.
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You carry neither. (Also no condoms, et. al.)
There is always “the one case” that proves nothing, and I seem to recall that it was about who could buy it and not a “make her bleed to death” (there were also other pharmacies). For what it’s worth, I’m pro-life as it get but if Pill A saves a woman from certain death even in the case of an abortion I’d sell it.
I’ve avoided this discussion because I’m not as familiar with the vagaries of pharmacy as I am medicine, but this seems like an odd requirement, especially for Plan B. You have up to 72 (recommended) - 120 (suggested by the literature) hours before the efficacy really starts dropping off. That seems like sufficient time to make arrangements for transportation, child-care, time off work, etc. Even if it wasn’t, if you have a prescription or your doctor is willing to call it in, the big chains will be happy to mail you a prescription if you like. Hell even Walmart has overnight delivery now, which sort of surprised me. But even if you don’t have a prescription, and somehow there isn’t a Walmart/CVS/Costco in your county, if you are an adult you can buy Plan B online, without a prescription, and get overnight delivery from a number of different retailers, possibly for less than the local pharmacy would charge.
In general all the larger chains will mail you meds (except narcotics). I have no idea why there are always people waiting on lines at CVS. Forcing local pharmacies to stock certain meds or order meds overnight and then dispense them seems like a solution to a nonexistent problem.
The whole controversy baffles me. As someone else pointed out in this thread, regular birth control pills can be used as emergency contraception and have been for years, albeit with slightly reduced efficacy and more unpleasant side effects, but no one seems to get excited about that…
I’m just trying to get to the meat of this law. Let’s say that a pharmacist has a business that caters to a retirement community. (It’s located within or sufficiently nearby) Therefore he makes a business decision that none of his customers need Plan B and decides not to stock it. At night, he operates an adult book store and live peep show and has no moral qualms against any deviant sexual activity at all, so he can’t even begin to be accused of any type of “bigotry” against abortion (your words, I’m not sure what bigotry against abortion is, but…).
Query: Must this pharmacy be forced to stock Plan B? Does he just have to eat the costs when the medicine expires and needs to be rotated out?
If you say this man doesn’t have to stock it, it seems as if any reason in the world is acceptable to not stock a particular medication, save a religious belief against abortion. That is a clear violation of the first amendment.
A private business doesn’t need to provide a government approved rationale for its business decisions. The local pharmacy here decided to stop selling cigarettes, but they still sell beer and wine. Is that rational? Should they have to justify that to left-wing satisfaction before being allowed to make that distinction?
And to answer the next retort: No, cigarettes are not the same as needed medication, but there are a lot of things that are needed. Should the local grocery store be under government mandate to stock certain types of foods? After all, I might be in a remote area and have to drive or take a bus a thousand miles to get my needed nutrition and I’m too poor to do any of that..
We do not license grocers. We do license pharmacists. A pharmacy which lacks a pharmacist and medicines (a convenience store) doesn’t have the government telling it what to do.
The burden should be on the pharmacist, who is part of the state mandated monopoly on licensing, and not on the private citizen. Even if the only drawback for the customer was that the had to walk across the street from the CVS to the Walgreens, the burden should still be on the guy who has a government sanctioned
license and whose job is to dispense medicine in support of the public good.
The “anti-abortion” movement is about the hatred of women, and nothing more.
Yes, because they’ve proven they cannot be trusted to behave honestly or competently when it comes to Plan B. If they don’t like it, too bad; they should have behaved like professionals in the first place.
I don’t think the big concern is women with only one pharmacy in a hundred mile radius. I think it is more along the lines of women with a dozen pharmacies in a hundred mile radius that live in the middle of the bible belt so not one of those dozen pharmacies carries plan B. There are online pharmacies that will provide overnight delivery but that isn’t a sure thing either. If you get your script on a Saturday and there is no delivery on Sunday you’re just SOL. If you are over 17 so you don’t need a prescription but you can’t buy it anywhere in your immediate area you could also be SOL. For example, I can use the CVS website to fill prescriptions or buy non-prescription items like nicotine patches but if I search for Plan B it doesn’t give me the option of placing an online order, it just shows me weight loss suppliments and dog food.
It was a simple question. No need for the snark.
But you are missing a key point. Plan B has to be taken early in order to work (preferably within 3 days of intercourse). The woman already has to get a prescription from a doctor, and waiting even just one extra day is going to have an impact on the effectiveness. And the cases we’re talking about are when it’s a hardship for the women to get the pharmacy in the first place. Now they’ll have to make 2 trips to those allegedly distant pharmacies by women who are transportationally challenged.
Got anything else in your bag of tricks?
A pharmacy that claims to be contiually is ‘out of stock’ will eventually have to justify their claim by showing their inventory and sales records. Really not that complicated.
Maybe an 800 number is established for women to call and report when a pharmacy is ‘out of stock’.
No enforcement policy will be perfect, but to say it can’t be enforced is overstating by a long shot.
If providing a solution and pointing out that something isn’t insurmountable tips your “snark” meter, you probably need it recalibrated.
Which is the best possible solution if they run out of stock, and being required to keep something in stock upon pain of law is unfeasible. After all, if you have a reserve of five doses and five women come in all of a sudden, you’re in violation of the law. It would certainly be workable to say that any pharmacy must stock, or have on order, a total of five doses at a time (or what have you). If you’re truly concerned about time, then have the physician’s office call the prescription in and the pharmacist arrange overnight delivery to the woman’s place of residence/work rather than the pharmacy itself. That, too, is not an insurmountable problem.
Moreover, while the issue of time and transportation is a relevant one, it’s not necessary to invoke it. Pharmacists and other state-licensed agents can and should be held to professional codes of conduct. For pharmacists, that includes being required to procure any and all legal medicines for their customers.
Why John, is that… snark?
But yes, viable solutions which address the pharmacist’s role and their government enforced monopoly on the ability to dispense prescription medicines are indeed part of my bag o’ tricks. I find that cogent arguments which address the matter at hand are quite useful to keep in said bag, along with breath strips.
Pharmacists don’t want to get their hands dirty, let hospital dispense it, to their profit.
This entire issue is the result of a group trying to use their profession as a political platform. Trying to force their morality on others. That’s wrong.
Well, if wasn’t snark then I stand corrected.
The transportation issue has been invoked by many posters in this thread. If you think it’s a non-issue, then correct them, not me. But the idea that the government is going to mandate “x” number of doses be kept in stock is just a simplistic “solution” that ignores the reality of running a business and enforcing the code. And if you end up revoking the guy’s license, then all you’ve done is punished everyone who goes to that pharmacy for something other than Plan B. These are exactly the kind of heavy handed tactics the many people rightly object to. Telling a business person what they must stock, how much they must stock, and how much they can charge. At that point, just have the fucking government do it and at least be honest about it.
Roughly three quarters of American households have internet access. That means there are still tens of millions without home internet access, presumably a large proportion on the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Does CVS/Caremark fill phone orders? From a brief look, they provide a mail order service but that obviously won’t work for Plan B or many other drugs. Online and mail order are also either much slower or more expensive. If you get free shipping then it is slow and if you get overnight then you pay a lot for the shipping. If you need medication quickly, it’s both faster and less expensive to get it locally rather than order it online or over the phone then get it shipped.
I didn’t it was a non issue. I specifically said it was a relevant issue but that it didn’t need to be invoked.
How so? Pharmacy X doesn’t have any doses on order. Citizen A calls some sort of federal/state number to complain. They investigate and ask to see the store’s inventory and order history.
Much like, if a biology teacher at a public school were to be fired because of teaching creationism, all you’ve done is punish all the students who were learning about all the non-creationism topics from the teacher. Professional standards and codes of conduct exist for a reason, and pointing out that a professional only violated one standard still leaves them in violation. We expect those licensed by the state to fulfill all of the functions of their profession, not just the ones they like. As for objections to the “heavy handed” nature of this policy, again, this is a career path with a guaranteed monopoly among licensed individuals. The idea that professional standards and codes of conduct are onerous to the point of objection may carry weight for some, but I don’t find it at all persuasive.