In any case, we were pleased that the Times-Union’s editorial used one of our blog posts to illustrate the seriousness of the problem of prescription drug abuse. The relevant excerpt:
Most people know that Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe both died from an overdose of prescription drugs.
Judy Garland also succumbed to a prescription drug overdose - as did Howard Hughes and Anna Nicole Smith, reports eDrugSearch.com, a medication advocacy site.
Then, there was Paige Summers. The Web site says she was 1998 Penthouse Pet of the Year.
Five years later, she was killed by an overdose of codeine and oxycodone.
You might think Big Pharma would give up its longstanding fight against Canadian drug reimportation — now that both John McCain and Barack Obama vocally support it (not to mention 80 percent of the American public).
You’d be wrong.
As it turns out, Big Pharma believes it has a trump card in its bid to maintain its inflated drug profits by keeping out competition from abroad. That trump card: the incompetence of the FDA.
Several lawmakers have proposed allowing Americans to buy drugs from abroad. Since many brand-name pharmaceuticals are available at a lower price in foreign countries, many believe that legalizing drug importation would help lower U.S. healthcare costs.
All of the plans to lift the ban, including ones by Barack Obama and John McCain, stipulate that only “safe” drugs will be permitted into the country.
It would be up to the FDA to make sure all imported drugs are safe and effective.
As the salmonella case illustrates all too clearly, such a promise would be almost impossible to keep.
Isn’t that beautiful? Big Pharma, which has advocated and overseen the gutting of the FDA’s regulatory capabilities over the past two decades, now says, “Sorry, but the FDA just doesn’t have the regulatory capabilities to monitor drug imports.”
That’s chutzpah, baby.
Of course, it’s not a lot different from what eDrugSearch.com faced when we appeared on the Mike and Juliet show last month. One of the other folks on stage was representing the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). The NABP was touting its own anti-import research — also funded by Big Pharma.
Of course, the irony of saying that imports aren’t safe — and that the FDA is incompetent to regulate them — is that many good ol’ American drugs sold at good ol’ American pharmacies are manufactured in China. We live in a largely deregulated global economy today — and this is the case whether you order your medications from U.S. or Canadian pharmacies. In most if not all cases, the drugs you receive from a properly licensed Canadian pharmacy are identical to those you would receive from a U.S. pharmacy.
So, yes, the FDA needs an overhaul as a regulatory body — that’s been made evident time and again in recent years. That means we need to do two things:
1. Extract the corrupting tentacles of Big Pharma from the FDA;
2. Dramatically increase funding to the FDA to ensure the organization has the resources to keep the public safe.
Sadly, Big Pharma — their protestations that they’re concerned for your safety to the contrary — wants NEITHER of these things to happen.
If it were up to them, the FDA would go away all together. Then you’d have to trust Big Pharma to “keep you safe” — and keep paying them protection money for the privilege.
We all know — or should know — by now that the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D) was crafted with the needs and convenience of Big Pharma, rather than patients, in mind. That’s why it’s so unwieldy for the consumer.
The worst part about Medicare Part D is the so-called “doughnut hole,” described by the Wall Street Journal as “the notorious gap in coverage … where (beneficiaries) generally must begin paying the full cost of their medicines. The doughnut hole kicks in when total drug expenditures by the beneficiary and the plan reach $2,510.”
Another egregious element of Medicare Part D, which has gotten less attention, is private “pharmacy benefit managers” charging Medicare beneficiaries MORE for prescription drugs than they cost at the pharmacy! These middlemen are ripping all of us off, too, since the taxpayers are picking up most of the tab. And by charging inflated prices, they push Medicare beneficiaries into the doughnut hole sooner.
Medicare is trying to fix the problem, but in the meantime, advocates for the elderly are advising them to buy at least some of their drugs outside the Medicare Part D plan.
Advises the Wall Street Journal:
Medicare drug-benefit participants buying drugs should consider checking low-price sellers of generic medications, such as Costco Wholesale Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., to see if their retail prices are lower than those in the insurance plan.
That is what Len Steinberg of Scottsdale, Ariz., did, and he found that Costco’s retail price for his generic nasal spray was about half of the drug’s total cost under his plan.
Mr. Steinberg, a 73-year-old retired employee-benefits consultant, says he now pays cash for certain cheap generics at Sam’s Club and Costco, rather than using his drug coverage. That allows him to avoid the doughnut hole and continue receiving coverage for his more expensive branded medications, he says.
Another option, of course, is to buy your medications from licensed Canadian pharmacies, where prices are on average about 50 percent less than the same drugs at U.S. pharmacies.
A Purdue University expert reports that more than 1.5 million Americans a year experience preventable drug-induced injuries. Many of these medication mistakes are caused by adverse interactions when a patient is given the wrong combination of drugs.
Watch this informative video from Craig Svensson, dean of Purdue’s College of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Health Sciences, explaining why medication errors are so common and offering solutions for preventing them.
No matter how much we try to protect ourselves from unsafe drugs and pharmacy practices, errors can and do occur. The Consumerist reports that a Utah teen was in ICU for 16 days after a Wal-Mart pharmacist gave him the wrong prescription for his strep throat.
Jessie Scott’s doctor had ordered a liquid solution of oxycodone hydrochloride to treat Scott’s pain — but the pharmacist gave him a concentrated solution, which caused Scott to consume 20 times the prescribed dose of the medication.
Ultimately, we have to trust our pharmacists — online or off — to do what they’ve been trained to do. But I would add that in my experience, when a liquid medication is concentrated — as stated on the box label, above — it calls for being diluted. This should be enough of a red flag to double check with the doctor before taking the medication.
I’m not saying this to criticize the victim in this case; what happened to him is absolutely inexcusable. But we should always try to learn from instances like this.
One of the messages I’ve been trying to communicate since I started this blog nearly two years ago is that, ultimately, you’ve got to look out for yourself when it comes to your health. Because no one cares as much about it as you do.
A new report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) underscores the results of other recent online pharmacy studies – showing that’s it’s too easy to buy prescription drugs, including controlled substances, without a prescription online.
Only 15 percent of 365 sites examined in the study required a prescription. According to Reuters, CASA recommends that the United States negotiate treaties with other governments to shut down illegal Internet trafficking of prescription drugs.
In April, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that included tougher regulation for online pharmacies — but the legislation is still awaiting action in the House.
