In an effort to eliminate unneeded regulations that hinder business Gov. Rick Scott is planning to do away with the Prescription Pill Database.
There may be some points in his favor. Gov. Scott says that this database is an invasion of privacy, and it would be. Most people records are protected under rules governing Doctor/patient rights, and this means that Law Enforcement can not get into your medical records with out permission, or a very good reason, such as that related to a crime. On the other hand records kept in a central network may not be protected as it could be argued that there is no expectation of privacy.
Why would we need a pill database? Why would it interfere with the way the Pill Mills dole out their product?
Florida is becoming a Mecca for people to purchase large amounts of prescription drugs, that is why. If a database is put in place, and all the information about the prescription are entered then legitimate Doctors, who really care about the patient, could tell that this person had prescriptions from more than one place. It might even help one Doctor tell if the patient has other prescriptions that might interfere with the prescription he is about to write. This all gets down to what the Doctor’s interest are, the patient or the money.
Think of how many celebrates might still be alive if there had been a database that could list all of their prescriptions, and who issued them. What if someone had noticed that Elvis Presley had had prescriptions for something like 8,000 pills in the last 8 or 9 months of his life. He had to have been shopping around, so what if there had been a list of the people who proscribed these pill to him, could they have been held responsible for his death?
Responsible pharmaceutical companies might push to have this Database in place if for no other reason than to prevent the abuse of their products.
So lets talk about one of the reputable companies, who might be interested in getting this database running… Below is a excerpt from a Tom Lyon article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Sunday Feb. 13 2011:
Take just one of the addictive-drug-making companies, Purdue, which happens to be a major political donor, primarily to Scott’s political party. Its biggest money-maker, by far, is OxyContin.
Surely such a corporate giant would do all it could to prevent its product from being dangerously over prescribed. Right?
Well, no. Purdue and some top executives were hammered in a federal plea agreement. The company agreed to pay $600 million in fines and payments because, basically, street corner crack sellers are more honest about the effects of their product than they were.
Purdue was charged with falsely marketing OxyContin to doctors by claiming it is far less addictive than similar drugs like Percocet and Vicodin. That lie became the theme of an all-out sales campaign in which drug reps presented doctors with charts showing made-up research results. And the bogus assurance led to skyrocketing sales as doctors prescribed OxyContin far more freely, and for far lesser pains.
So there! We now know of at least two who do NOT have your interest at heart, Perdue and Gov. Scott.
I still say that is is amazing that %60 of the voters in Florida DID NOT VOTE.
It like the old saying “you get what you pay for” though in this case it is “you get what you vote for”.
It would be nice to think that large companies would act in a responsible manner but, for that to happen someone has to be responsible… There has to be someone to point at and say, “they did it”.
Take Gov. Scott getting kicked out of HCA. He was either responsible, and just had enough insulation between himself and the people who actually commited fraud, or he was, as he has said, not aware of it, and therefor NOT RESPONISBLE.
Gov. Scott wants to do away with all the regulations that would get in the way of large companies and one way of doing this would be to fix things so that the drug companies would have even fewer restriction on who they could sell to. Pain clinics could continue to sell drugs to anyone who could afford buy them, and Florida would continue to be a Mecca for the sale and abuse of precription drugs.
Related articles
- Florida Targeting ‘Pill Mills’ – WSJ.com#articleTabs%3Darticle (shammond.typepad.com)
That Joe Guy 