Just tried to get a prescription filled for the painkiller Oxycontin. You will not believe the nonsense I went through.
I went to a store named Walgreens. It is a drugstore/convenience store setup but I think they make much of their money by filling prescriptions.
The pharmacist at Walgreens on this night really sucked. He did not want to fill my prescription without first contacting the doctor who wrote it. This is extraordinary behavior that is only done if the pharmacist is suspicious of the person trying to get the prescription filled. In other words the pharmacist thinks the prescription is false and you are trying to get your hands on a powerful narcotic painkiller illegally.
This is the state that healthcare has come to in the United States. All sorts of laws and agencies are looking over the shoulders of your doctor and pharmacist trying to make sure that the use of a drug is legitimate.
I for one do not like law enforcement or other enforcement agencies looking over my shoulder and prying into my business when it comes to the medicines I take and what I take them for.
That’s why alarm bells went off when I heard reports that Florida prosecutors said Rush Limba ‘doctor shopped’ to get illegal amounts of painkiller. I doctor shop too but only to find a quality doctor (although I think Limba probably is guilty of illegally obtaining and using painkillers).
Believe me there are many doctors out there who will misdiagnose you or who cannot figure out what ills you. They will not take into account your experiences and knowledge or the diagnosis of doctors you have seen in the past.
The ability to doctor shop without being suspected (and possibly investigated) of seeking powerful drugs for illegal purposes is important.
If law enforcement starts investigating you because you go to many different doctors then America is in pretty bad shape. The rights to privacy for every American citizen are being threatened or violated.
Police budgets are already causing the American taxpayer millions as police agencies spend millions trying to investigate every ‘questionable’ use of almost every drug whether legal or illegal.
I heard of narcotic squads tracking people every place they went to see if they were involved in illicit drug deals or use. People have been tracked and followed to stores, movie theaters and a slew of other places (I say this based on real incidents of out of control police narcotic squads and county, state, and federal prosecutor offices and enforcement agencies.).
Lets face it many things can be used for a high. They don’t even have to be drugs. They can be things like glue or paint thinner.
Law enforcement needs to be clear and focused when it enforces drug laws. They cannot chase down every little illicit use of some item or drug. There is not that much money in the world.
Let me get back to the lame pharmacist at Walgreens. Pharmacists are not doctors and should not be playing detective with peoples’ prescriptions. Their job is to make sure the prescription meets all the criteria of a legitimate doctor’s prescription and fill it. They should not be trying to call your doctor at unseemly hours of the night trying to confirm the legitimacy of a prescription but this was the nonsense that the Wallgreens pharmacist put me through.
I’ll be pulling my business (and encourage my family to do the same) from Walgreens for some other pharmacy (and there are a lot of them) where the pharmacist fills your prescription quickly and accurately without taking any extraordinary steps because of things like the way one looks or acts (highly subjective criteria).
Once I move my elderly family members’ prescriptions over to another pharmacy it will easily be a four plus hundred dollar loss a month to Walgreens. This is nothing to a big store with many outlets but if they continue to ‘piss off’ their customers like I was ‘pissed off’ more will leave and eventually things will add up if you know what I mean.
Lets get government out of the doctor/patient relationship when it comes to pain management. The doctor/patient relationship needs to be protected and kept private.