U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
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U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
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Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#2Yikes, my girlfriend is applying to med school as we speak. The medical industry is certainly a highly regulated, potentially overpriced service for decades now.
When I see a headline like this, I have to seriously ask myself: "Is this when the bubble finally pops, or will it be status quo for another generation?"
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#3Yikes, my girlfriend is applying to med school as we speak. The medical industry is certainly a highly regulated, potentially overpriced service for decades now. When I see a headline like this, I have to seriously ask myself: "Is this when the bubble finally pops, or will it be status quo for another generation?"
The medical changes in the US take forever for change to occur. Even if greater access to some of these common medications is to happen, it will take close to a decade or more to see it meaningfully impact the industry. There will likely be a few drugs that become available before that, but likely not many and not enough to change the cost basis much.
The US medical and pharmaceutical community is a very powerful political lobbying group as a whole and while some of this might be good for them they are not great at change, so it will be fought for years to come.
Medicine in the US may become more affordable, but will not lose its prestige or the solid return on investment for physicians overall, IMO.
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#4Similar to this idea, the province of Alberta in Canada allows pharmacists to write prescriptions for patients with only the only limit that they can't prescribe controlled substances.
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#5This will be great for pharmaceutical profits, not so great for insurance premiums.
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#6Yikes, my girlfriend is applying to med school as we speak. The medical industry is certainly a highly regulated, potentially overpriced service for decades now. When I see a headline like this, I have to seriously ask myself: "Is this when the bubble finally pops, or will it be status quo for another generation?"
The medical changes in the US take forever for change to occur. Even if greater access to some of these common medications is to happen, it will take close to a decade or more to see it meaningfully impact the industry. There will likely be a few drugs that become available before that, but likely not many and not enough to change the cost basis much. The US medical and pharmaceutical community is a very powerful pol…
I'd be pretty shocked if the pharmaceutical industry is against this. I would bet they _lobbied_ for it. They can already advertise direct to consumers, now those consumers will be able to go directly to purchasing medication with no intermediary (no "ask your doctor if X is right for you"). This seems like it's GREAT for them. I would expect marketing budgets to go up dramatically in pursuit of these disintermediated consumers, and those marketing dollars to have a great return on investment.
Do you have any reason to think otherwise?
Hmm, pharmaceutical industry lobbying seems to have had a significant bump in 2017, from $250 million to $280 million based on lobbying paperwork filed... https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=H04&yea...
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#7Yikes, my girlfriend is applying to med school as we speak. The medical industry is certainly a highly regulated, potentially overpriced service for decades now. When I see a headline like this, I have to seriously ask myself: "Is this when the bubble finally pops, or will it be status quo for another generation?"
It's just shifting to pharmacists who are also medical professionals, it was inevitable given the success of pharmacy based immunization programs.
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#8Similar to this idea, the province of Alberta in Canada allows pharmacists to write prescriptions for patients with only the only limit that they can't prescribe controlled substances.
Presumably only for trivial conditions id hope.
Edit it will also lead to over prescribing of antibiotics and cause drug resistance to rise
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#9Yikes, my girlfriend is applying to med school as we speak. The medical industry is certainly a highly regulated, potentially overpriced service for decades now. When I see a headline like this, I have to seriously ask myself: "Is this when the bubble finally pops, or will it be status quo for another generation?"
Highly regulated except for one critical aspect, and that is price. Other nations control the prices that are allowed to be paid for drugs.
Re: U.S. to make More Drugs Easily Available, Cutting Role Doctors Play
#10I think this is good. For many people a lot of the costs are the doctor visits. Look at the Walmart 100 common generics for $4. I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of the hospital visits can be solved by one of these generics but then we add an expensive doctor visit to get a $4 medicine. There needs to be a more affordable solution.