191–200 of 308 posts
There are better ways to go about this. As others have noted, there must be a mechanism for a continual prescription to be easily filled, e.g. insulin, metformin, etc. I could see a long term prescription that has to be renewed each year and is good at any pharmacy. For the short term prescriptions though, cutting the doctor out of it makes people much more susceptible to marketing (instead of 'ask your doctor if you…
There are better ways to go about this. As others have noted, there must be a mechanism for a continual prescription to be easily filled, e.g. insulin, metformin, etc. I could see a long term prescription that has to be renewed each year and is good at any pharmacy. For the short term prescriptions though, cutting the doctor out of it makes people much more susceptible to marketing (instead of 'ask your doctor if you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is that I don't even need to call to get my prescriptions refilled. I login to my doctor's EMR portal, select medication from the menu on the left, select the check boxes next to the medications I need refills of and click the refill button. A few hours or the next day at the latest my Walgreens app alerts me that my prescriptions are ready.
The prescription is probably good for some limited number of refills.
The above mentioned case of doctors who require a pap smear for birth control is unrelated; it’s a barrier to access to contraceptives, which is motivated not by medical concerns or even greed, but by politics.
There are better ways to go about this. As others have noted, there must be a mechanism for a continual prescription to be easily filled, e.g. insulin, metformin, etc. I could see a long term prescription that has to be renewed each year and is good at any pharmacy. For the short term prescriptions though, cutting the doctor out of it makes people much more susceptible to marketing (instead of 'ask your doctor if you…
I'd also be concerned it might exacerbate the opioid epidemic.
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I find it doubtful that Atorvastatin was not available for health/risk reasons. I can buy it cash in 5 minutes, no questions asked. What tends to happen in some EU countries is that the retail drugs are heavily subsidized by the government, and then all kinds of kludges are put in place to prevent people buying bulk quantities and reselling them in some other EU country where the price is much higher - the export its…
(unless Austria, where this happened, really does have very strict OTC drug laws on medical grounds)
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I’m not I agree. The first reason is that many medications carry significant risks. For instance you mention insulin. For someone already prescribed insulin, yes it should be easy to access in case they should be able to get more (and that is the purpose of a repeat prescription). However, to provide insulin over the counter to someone never previously prescribed it could be incredibly dangerous, and indeed fatal. Th…
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I’m not I agree. The first reason is that many medications carry significant risks. For instance you mention insulin. For someone already prescribed insulin, yes it should be easy to access in case they should be able to get more (and that is the purpose of a repeat prescription). However, to provide insulin over the counter to someone never previously prescribed it could be incredibly dangerous, and indeed fatal. Th…
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I’m not I agree. The first reason is that many medications carry significant risks. For instance you mention insulin. For someone already prescribed insulin, yes it should be easy to access in case they should be able to get more (and that is the purpose of a repeat prescription). However, to provide insulin over the counter to someone never previously prescribed it could be incredibly dangerous, and indeed fatal. Th…
People regularly poison their livers with hypervitaminosis A, yet vitamin A supplements, liver meat, and other extremely dense sources of vitamin A are not labelled in any way which would indicate this danger. Beyond products, the sheer number of ways you could kill yourself in this world is staggering, why is it more wrong to be exposed to risk from pharmaceuticals than from something like traffic or supplements?
I live in a country where this scheme is already the norm (Saudi Arabia) and I can say that while it's not necessarily ideal, I much prefer it to the alternative. It plugs some seriously annoying holes in the healthcare experience and frees up doctors' time for more patients. As it is, the only medications that require a prescription to buy in Saudi are psychotropic ones, narcotics, and most recently, antibiotics. Th…
I’m not I agree. The first reason is that many medications carry significant risks. For instance you mention insulin. For someone already prescribed insulin, yes it should be easy to access in case they should be able to get more (and that is the purpose of a repeat prescription). However, to provide insulin over the counter to someone never previously prescribed it could be incredibly dangerous, and indeed fatal. Th…
The self-medication thing is a seriously double-edged sword. You elucidated why very clearly. I have two reasons though to believe that it's a SLIGHTLY less risky practice over here;
1, pharmacists are very engaged with patients in recommending medications and constantly steer them to doctors- and they are more confidant with in-class substitutions rather than dispensing to a patient outright without vitals or history (beyond what is disclosed orally by the patient). However, they'll still recommend medications freely when they judge them as being unlikely to go to a doctor otherwise, hence risking more damage. Lesser evil and all that.
2, a long history of OTC availability of medications, where controlled prescriptions are the exception rather than the norm, seems to have lead to a culture of caution and careful reading of medication leaflets, asking the pharmacists, etc. I don't mean this as necessarily a good thing, I think this is more of a "you're on your own" mentality with regards to being careful with medications. This mentality grew, I think, partially from issues with access to doctors (governmental neighborhood health centers, kind of like small GP practices in the US/UK, are a somewhat new thing here. It was all centered around huge hospitals in the past). The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that this mode of thinking is about to be reinforced further by rising healthcare costs in the face of the rapid privatization of the healthcare sector, and it will clash with increasing OTC regulations.
One aside I will say about antidepressives which you mention; I think this merits a special examination separate from the rest of the healthcare issues. I've slowly come to realize that a massive portion of the population here are actually on antidepressants (mostly SSRI and SNRI meds). Why is this notable? Because it's not anywhere near commensurate with the number of people using psychotherapy or visiting psychiatrists. The reason, I believe, is because there is such a stigma around mental illness here that I think it would be very difficult to get many of these patients into more suitable therapy, and OTC Prozac or what have you helps hide the ""shame"". We're finally, FINALLY slowly moving past this stigma, probably catching up with the public attitude of the US/EU towards mental health in the 1980s or so. I really hope this will eventually lead to mental health patients not feeling that they need to self-medicate.
Edit: I forgot to mention that you're also completely correct in the assumption about quack medicine. It is, unfortunately, endemic here. It's a constant struggle to convince loved ones that, no, Supplement X is neither a peer-reviewed medication nor is it an alternative for treatment. At the very least the regulatory environment is increasingly more strict about misleading medical claims on herbal products, etc