FDA Has a Good Idea; Doctors Object
The idea: In a move that could help the government trim its burgeoning health care costs, the Food and Drug Administration may soon permit Americans to obtain some drugs used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes without obtaining a prescription.
The Doctors’ Objection: “What the government via the FDA has decided to do is just bypass the expensive doctor and to satisfy some safety concerns of letting people just pick out their medications is make sure they have to get counsel by the pharmacists,” Dr. Mintz [an internist at George Washington University Hospital] said. “I believe there is value to using pharmacists, but not at the expense of primary care.”
The Pharmacists Counter: “We think it’s a great development for everybody — for pharmacists, for patients and the whole health care system,” said Brian Gallagher, a lobbyist for the American Pharmacists Association. “The way we look at it is there are a lot of people out there with chronic conditions that are undertreated and this would enable the pharmacists to redirect these undertreated people back into the health care system.”
More from Paige Winfield Cunningham in the Washington Times.
Great idea! Pharmacists are capable of helping people monitor some conditions.
Drug therapies are the most efficient way to treat most illnesses. Yet we have a system that grants the medical profession the exclusive privilege to control access to most drug therapies. When the trade association for that profession objects to a regulation chipping away at their privilege, we’re supposed to take their concerns seriously?
I like doctors and respect their immense knowledge and ability. But it makes no sense from an economic standpoint to grant them an exclusive privilege to be gatekeepers to drug therapies. Doctors and pharmacists (and other health care entities, for that matter) should be granted competing rights to administer and manage drug selected therapies.
Creating a third class of drugs, known as behind the counter drugs, that pharmacists can dispense without a prescription is a great idea.
As a patient, I do not think OTC is the route to go, especially for patients who have no knowledge of their illness, disease, or symptoms. If insurance will cover with appropriate copay, and Medicare/Medicaid will cover, then maybe. As it is in the present form, OTC drugs are not covered and this may well be the death of many patients presently on high cost drugs.
I still believe that patients should have to see a doctor in order to monitor progress or lack of progress. Busters idea of behind the counter drugs if covered by insurance is a possibility worth exploring.
It’s about time. My guess is that the FDA won’t include enough drugs on that list.