Forcing Pharmacists to Dispense Drugs.
I originally suggested that Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey blog about this, seeing as she is both a woman and a Libertarian, but she failed to take the bait. Then, days later, I posted a comment over at Nashville is Stalking, but brittney either lost it, never got it, or failed to approve the comment for some reason. It’s funny how that only happens to me when I post to lefty feminists type blogs. Oh well, no explanation is needed, they have their forum and I have mine.
The meat of the matter is here: Rape victim: ‘Morning after’ pill denied
Although it is safe, effective and legal, emergency contraception - the “morning after” pill - can be hard to find in Tucson.
After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent a pregnancy, knowing that each passing day lowered the chance the drug would work.
While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug.
When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.
“I was so shocked,” said the 20-year-old woman, who, as a victim of sexual assault, is not being named by the Star. “I just did not understand how they could legally refuse to do this.”
But many stores are. A 2004 survey of more than 900 Arizona pharmacies found less than half keep emergency contraception drugs in stock, with most saying there is too little demand, but some cite moral reasons, according to the Arizona Family Planning Council.
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Now upon hearing that one of my local pharmacists would refuse to sell something like ?Plan B’, I would refuse to spend my dollars there, even though I’m male and the decision does not really effect me. Some of the commenters were saying that because they were state licensed Pharmacist, they should be forced by the government to dispense the medication even if the Pharmacist was personally against anyone using the medicine. The idea that just because they are licensed by the state means anything is just crazy. Should gas stations, licensed by the state, sell gas 24/7 just because they are near the freeway and someone might run out of gas? Should all Doctors be forced to have weekend hours just because some people might get sick? Although I don’t necessarily support abortion, I don’t believe it’s the the governments place to either outlaw the procedure nor force someone to sell a product. For a feminist to say otherwise is to promote a double standard. Next time, call for a boycott. It’s your money, you and your like minded friends can spend it any way you want.
I’m a male so this isn’t the type of Standard Mischief I’d normally post in my blog, but Planned Parenthood has an excellent page on making your own :
Pill Brand Manufacturer Pills per Dose
Alesse? Wyeth-Ayerst 5 pink pills
Aviane? Duramed 5 orange pills
Cryselle? Barr 4 white pills
Enpress? Barr 4 orange pills
Lessina? Barr 5 pink pills
Levlen? Berlex 4 light orange pills
Levlite? Berlex 5 pink pills
Levora? Watson 4 white pills
Lo/Ovral? Wyeth-Ayerst 4 white pills
Low-Ogestrel? Watson 4 white pills
Nordette? Wyeth-Ayerst 4 light orange pills
Ogestrel? Watson 2 white pills
Ovral? Wyeth-Ayerst 2 white pills
Portia? Barr 4 pink pills
Seasonale? Barr 4 pink pills
Tri-Levlen? Berlex 4 yellow pills
Triphasil? Wyeth-Ayerst 4 yellow pills
Trivora? Watson 4 pink pills
(Just for the record, I think you need 2 doses, spaced 12 hours apart, and the above lists the number of pills per dose. Before relying on me, the guy that’s not a Doctor, for medical advice, you really ought to talk to/call/consult a Doctor or pro-emergency contraceptive Pharmacist. At the very least, click on the link and read the Planned Parenthood website)
You see, emergency contraceptive isn’t some kinda special, pure unobtainum mojo. It’s just a large dose of everyday birth control pills that prevents pregnancy by preventing an egg from implanting. If Planned Parenthood is charging $70, it’s so it can offer the pills to people in need at a lower cost. I’ve never bought anything but over the counter type birth control but I don’t think the pill is that expensive. Those dummies that refuse to sell ?plan B’ more than likely stock one or more types of birth control pills.
Let’s all take a lesson from hurricane Katrina. When the chips are down, the last thing you want to do is rely on the government to bail you out. In a free county, business have a right to be able to run their business as they see fit. I have a spare tire. I have a first aid kit. I have a few days of food and a plan to leave town and stay at my brother’s in an emergency. While I think I might have a problem convincing my Doctor that I need some reserve birth control pills, I imagine it would not be a problem for most women. I’d imagine that every woman knows one or two other ladies that might be using the Pill. In a emergency, I wouldn’t deny a friend some of my medication. Encourage this. It’s easy, smart and makes sense. Push for the availability of more drugs without a prescription, because I’m there with you, but keep your laws off my Pharmacist.
Jacqueline Says :
$70 may be the full list price, but very few people at PP pay full price because they charge on a sliding scale based on income.
I don’t think the government should get involved, but I wish more pharmacy chains would make it a condition of employment for their pharmacists that they must fill all birth control prescriptions. If they have a moral problem with dispensing medications then they should choose a different career.
2005-11-09 22:12 PermalinkStandard Mischief Says :
I’ve never heard of any pharmacy not dispensing birth control pills, only emergency contraceptive. The point was that birth control pills are emergency contraceptive, if you dose them differently, and are already easy to get. This is sorta like taking 4 over-the-counter Ibuprofin tablets at 200mg each instead of jumping through the hoops to get your prescription filled for the 800mg horse pills. Same drug, same dosages, different packaging.
Although “plan B” is mildly controversial, I’ve never known any chain or bigbox to not dispense birth control pills. If Mall-Wart, Bullseye/Red Dot, J-mart. CVS tree, Mallgreens, or any of the other big chains refused to dispense birth control, I’m sure they would quickly have a boycott on their hands.
Remember, amoral corporations just want to make as much money as possible. They have the right to cater to the majority to seek that money. If they refuse to serve a market, someone else usually comes along to fill that need. This is someplace where letting the free market work things out is a good idea.
As a person hiring for a pharmacists position in one of the big chains, I’d want to see if there was any reason why the person seeking the position would not dispense anything on religious grounds, but it would be a question that would be illegal to ask. Perhaps you could ask them if there was any reason why they would not dispense any legal drug, assuming they were presented with a valid prescription. Let them bring up religious grounds.
2005-11-10 09:56 PermalinkTino Says :
I think that you are missing the point, primarily for three reasons:
1. Yes, gas stations are licensed by the state, but the pharmacist class is entirely a creation of the state. I am sure that you have noticed what happens to people who are caught dispensing drugs without the blessing of the state’s pharmacist-licensing apparatus. The precise purpose of the drugs being sold may well vary, but you can’t deny that one of this country’s greatest priorities — right up there with catching Osama Bin Laden — is to make sure that drugs are only dispensed by physicians and official pharmacists.
2. The comparison to office and gas-station hours is particularly inapt. Nobody is saying that the pharmacy fails its customers by not dispensing morning-after pills at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. And gas stations that owe their existence to the state to the degree that the pharmacist class does — I am thinking here of the gas stations on turnpikes — generally *are* required as a condition of their franchise there to sell gas 24 hours a day.
3. Pharmacists hold themselves out as ‘professionals’, though they are admittedly on one of the bottom rungs of that ladder. Physicians and lawyers also have their personal codes of ethics, but their *professional* codes hold that they should provide medical care or legal services in an impartial manner regardless of their personal feelings (though obviously one would prefer to have a lawyer who is genuinely sympathetic to one’s cause).
This not only results in the public having greater access to these services, but it protects the professionals against reprisals and scorn from the community for treating or representing an unpopular client. Thus the medical and bar associations can at least say that their members are leaving the ultimate disposition of one’s life or liberty up to God or the law, respectively. If physicians and lawyers had more ethical latitude in whom they were willing to treat or represent, they could legitimately be held more responsible for the outcome of cases.
If pharmacists want to be able to pick and choose which prescriptions they will fill, they will find themselves in a bad position: not only will their decisions then be individually subject to the judgement of the community, but they’ll also probably find themselves legally liable for any bad effects of the drugs they *do* dispense.
2005-11-10 10:53 PermalinkStandard Mischief Says :
I’m only going to contest the first part of point #1. Although professional licenses do differ from business type licenses, pharmacist predate the FDA. You use to be able to buy a brand name preparation, or chose to let a pharmacist compound a generic equivalent from their book of recipes. Prescriptions were just recommendations written by a doctor in a jargon filled language on plain paper. No triplicate forms, “pop-up voids”, DEA numbers or any such nonsense.
I’ll concede point #2. Yes, they were not really great analogies. Your doctor/lawyer one is better.
I’m somewhat confused by point #3. My understanding is that doctors are free to not provide abortions if that’s what they wish to do. In an emergency, good samaritan laws require them to render emergency aid to the best of their ability, but I think that’s the extent of their compulsion to serve.
Lawyers, too I think are able to pick and choose their clients that they accept in most cases. There is a number of rules where they can’t accept clients, like they are already a lawyer for someone’s opponent, but by and large if you walked in to a lawyers office and waved a bunch of cash around, I don’t think they would be required to offer legal aid (unlikely as that is to happen in real life). If they do agree to provide legal services, they must, as you say, do so in an impartial manner.
Under this analogy, a pharmacist would be required, if he chose to fill the prescription, (take the case, treat the patient) to count those pills out to the best of his ability. And I’m sure it would be a breach of professional ethics, as well as a spectacular trial, if a pharmacist were to dispense sugar pills where birth control or emergency contraceptives were indicated on the script.
2005-11-10 17:52 PermalinkStandard Mischief » Blog Archive » Wal-Mart Ordered To Stock Contraceptives In Massachusetts. Says :
[...] Heck, I’ve even posted a blog entry on how emergency contraceptive is the same exact drug as regular birth control pills. So if your doctor writes out you prescription a little differently, and gives you different dosing instructions you can even get your emergency contraceptive at Wal-Mart, if that’s your only option. I hashed this out with tgirsch over at SayUncle’s place, but I have little to add to this specific argument. (There are other issues that I’ve promised to address.) tgirsch Says: But again, this is where our philosophies differ. I think that all that should matter is that a product has been proven safe (FDA approval), that the patient wants or needs it, and that a physician has recommended it (via a prescription). You, however, would add profitability to this equation. In other words, if a patient needs something, and a doctor agrees that the patient needs it, you would allow the market to decide (based on profitability) whether or not the patient actually gets it. That?s why I make my complaint that the market ought to serve us, rather than the other way around. [...]
2006-02-16 23:04 PermalinkStandard Mischief » Blog Archive » Plan B, personal responsibility, and the FDA Says :
[...] (I?ve already covered EC, Plan B and it?s off-label, but still safe and effective alternatives here and here.) [...]
2006-06-06 11:23 Permalink