Slashdot Mirror

or "This does not look like the medication I usually get, I don't trust this, I'm not taking this!"

On the other hand, the visible features of a pill are often the only way to differentiate between different doses or different medications. That's why the Physician's Desk Reference often has pictures of the pills.

It's a SAFETY feature. Your elderly patients are quite right to question the look of the medications they are being given. It is not unheard of for pharmacists or nurses to make mistakes and hand out the wrong pills. ANY patient is right to question.

This idea that you can trick people into taking the medicine by making it look just like something they are used to taking is absolutely pathetic. The fact that nobody will be able to tell the difference between a 5mg dose of something and a 50mg dose could kill someone. It will have nurses who distribute meds saying "it's in your medication cup, it must be for you and it must be the right thing". Or someone will put the wrong thing in the med dispenser cart because it looks the same ...

However, even though that can be very annoying I'm more worried about me being able to quick and clearly tell the difference in pills and dosage.....

It is right for you to worry, but if you screw up the worst that happens to you is you lose your job at that facility and you have to go work at another one. For the patient it can be deadly.

This is really no different than a compounding pharmacy. The claim that insurance has stopped paying for compounding should be a death knell for this idea, too. Why would they pay for a machine to dole out the specific amount of a bulk med when they won't pay for a machine to dole out the specific amount of a bulk med? That's right, compounding pharmacies were already using automation to create their products. What's the difference, again? "With a computer"? Feh.

Are you SURE that you want to take this attitude for medical procedures? Really? Excellent idea for criminal law though.

Yes I do. If I could I'd abolish the FDA and get rid of the requirement to have a doctor signed prescription for drugs. The most I'd require would be a signed statement saying the user knew the risks. I realize many people depend on their doctor for advise, there's nothing wrong with getting advise, but they also need to be proactive in their own health care. When I've been given a prescription by a doctor one of the first things I do is look up the drug in the PDR, Physicians' Desk Reference, which bookstores carry so you don't have to buy it. Now I can also Google it.

Falcon

Um, the one country I know of with close to free market medicine has by far the highest medical costs.

Would that country happen to be the US? Though most people don't know or realize it the US there is no free market in health or medical care. John McCain's proposal would bring it closer though. During World War II the US federal government passed wage control laws, employers weren't allowed to offer employees more pay. However this created a problem for employers, prospective employees demanded more than they could pay. To make up for this the government allowed employers to offer health insurance to employees and gave businesses that did tax breaks Some who's employer does not offer insurance, many can't afford it, and those who are self employed do not get those tax breaks. However McCain's plan would allow everybody to get tax breaks when they buy their own insurance. Employer provided health insurance can cost the employer thousands of dollars. However with these breaks employers could pay employees more, say $3000 which should be less than health insurance cost some employers, so more people could shop for private insurance policies, and with more people thus shopping insurance policy issuers would lower their prices. People complain about competition in the labor pool, such as complaining when US employers offshore outsource jobs to China but they refuse to admit the same mechanism will work for health insurance as well.

Also with a free market more neighborhood walk-in clinics could be opened. Instead of a clinic needing a bunch of doctors when they are open, some Nurse Practitioners and Physician assistants can be practice medicine under fewer physicians reducing costs. People could also form Health Coops easier.

All of these would help reduce the cost of health care.

A free market in medicine has an incentive for you to be sick so you are handing over money

Just as people go into engineering or IT because they want to, people also go into medicine because they want to. Not everybody has a profit motive for going into medicine.

In a free market medicines that don't cure but simply prolong life expectancy are the most desirable drugs.

In a free market it's the patient's decision on what drugs to take, and with drug data available they can make their own informed decision. For instance when I was given prescriptions from my doc, I'd ask the doc questions about the drug. Then I'd look it up in the Physicians Deck reference, PDR. After knowing more about a drug, if I wanted to I could ask more about side effects or about other drugs if I still had questions. In other words I actively participated in my own health care.

Free Market economics is not magic pixie dust. Milton Friedman was almost entirely correct about his observations, The usefulness of his conclusions vary based to what type of world you want to live in.

I agree a free market isn't pixie dust. However I distrust business a lot less than I distrust government. Except maybe tobacco I know of no business or industry that has killed more people than governments have. In the 20th century alone governments have killed more than 70.8 million people. I seriously doubt businesses have killed a fraction of that. That I know of the largest case, number of people dying at one tyme, because of a business is Union Carbide's accident, which was not an accident, in Bhupal, India which killed about 20,000 according to the wiki article.

I don't want to see drug dealers and hookers on my street corner,

And I don't want people locked up when they aren't harming anyone else, especially

And I would consider it a "modern anachronism" that this wasn't computerized, everywhere, a long, long time ago. I shouldn't have to rely solely on a human "remembering" a dangerous combo. That's what databases are for.

Actually there are computerized databases. One such is Physician's Desk Reference, PDR. All doctors' offices should have the book. I myself have gone to the bookstore to lookup every drug I've been given in the PDR.

Why are doctors so resistant to modernization, i.e., accepting that they aren't gods?

Many realize they don't know everything, but like everything else a person buys, they should know what they are buying. Visit several docs until you find the one you like. Of course that cost money many can't afford.

You know, in that same vein! ( :( ) there is a product called Thrombin JMI, which is recombinant bovine thrombin (aka activated Factor II. It is a spray that will aid in blood clotting. But this again is for small oozy/capillary type bleeding.

It's worth noting that (at least according to the Jargon File) caffeine bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin. That may or may not have something to do with why coffee helps soothe your ADHD.

Seems they figure its a good way to get more branded info infront of the MD and get on their good side - so they write perscriptions for the Real Stuff not some cheap Generic Equiv.

Oh, yes. It's scary the way drug companies court doctors and hospitals. (Even veternarians, too, to a lesser extent.) For example, for one new allergy drug the makers sponsored a seminar: "the invitation included round-trip airfare to California, accommodations at a luxury hotel, and a participation fee of $1,000..."

The PDR on springboard looks pretty interesting!

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/