Licensed to Heal
This is David Henderson quoting Richard Thaler:
Pharmacists must be the most underemployed professionals. Lots of schooling to count pills. In France they actually do stuff.
David adds:
Milton Friedman … almost single-handedly, in the economics profession [the other one was the late Reuben Kessel] got the case against health-care licensing treated seriously with his chapter on it in Capitalism and Freedom.
Economists’ poll on health care licensing.
I agree (as do most pharmacists) that pharmacists have far more education than they are allowed to use on the job. Pharmacists should be allowed to take on more responsibility for patient care. In some countries, pharmacists have a range of approved medications they are allowed to dispense without a prescription. It makes sense to allow that here in the United States.
As Friedman explained, the only legitimate role for government is to certify, not regulate.
OK, but in France the pharmacies are over-regulated. That is, each pharmacy has to be owned by a pharmacist. There are no Walgreen’s or CVS in France. So, they use more of their skills, but their services are very expensive and they are perhaps “overskilled.”
I remember diving in the Mediterranean a few years ago and my ear got clogged up. I went into the pharmacy for a saline solution to clear out my ear and it cost a multiple of what it would in the U.S. or Canada because the pharmacist had to dispense it. I couldn’t just pick it up like toothpaste.
The profession of pharmacy is in a bind. Traditionally, they compounded medicines from chemicals. There is little of that going on any more. The profession has tried to become less pill-pushers and more pill-counsellors – advising on adherence, side effects, and interactions. However, it is difficult to get paid for this if you’re working at an outpatient pharmacy.
My casual empirical research leads me to believe that pharmacists find working in hospitals more rewarding, for this reason.
Wow, I’ve always wondered about this. They’ve always seemed so much smarter, so much more educated than their profession shows/allows them to be.
Sometimes when I go to a pharmacy, I ask them all kinds of questions that they probably never get about drug interactions, vitamin/supplement and drug interactions, all kinds of stuff. But usually I do this when it’s late when they’re not counting too many of other people’s pills.
For the most part, they seem to know their stuff.
I have thought the same thing.