Lacking Up Life-Saving Drugs

Thanks to Kerry Howley for saying what I have wanted to say for years ("Locking Up Life-Saving Drugs," August/September).

Being a libertarian and a pharmacist, I have had time to contemplate the issue of why most drugs require physician intervention to begin with. The only valid reasons are patents and protectionism for physicians and drug companies. That, and drug companies and doctors consider laypeople too ignorant to manage their own care.

With the advent of the Internet, drug information is readily available to anyone willing to take the time to find it. I would suggest leaving the definitive diagnosis to doctors, but treatment options must be left to the patient. To say that we as pharmacists and physicians somehow have a mystical monopoly on drug information is fallacious. Go to any Barnes and Noble, and you'll see plenty of pocket-sized books on drugs.

Let's also add professional licensure to the mix of why medical care is so expensive. Look at the disciplinary actions of any licensing board for any given month, and you will conclude that the piece of paper is worthless. But people are so conditioned to think that a piece of paper issued by the state is some guarantee of ethics and professional ability that the likelihood of licensure going away is remote.

The beauty of moving most commonly used drugs to over-the-counter status is that the need for the pharmacist still remains. We can strategically place ourselves as medication management experts and help people stay on top of interactions, side effects, and monitoring drug therapy for efficacy. I have worked in hospital pharmacy for more than 20 years, and since everything done in a hospital must be by physician order anyway, my job is secure. Pharmacists adjusted when drug companies started making finished dosage forms (tablets and capsules) and effectively took most compounding away. We simply have to find ways to make our services marketable to consumers, who deserve to orchestrate their own care.

Joe Haynes, R.Ph., MBA

Seminole, FL

COPYRIGHT 2005 Reason Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group