"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
The plaintiffs argued that state policy requires pharmacies to provide all "commonly prescribed medicines.
Can the state really tell a store what products to stock? Seems unlikely, but it is Massachusetts, so who knows. More to the point, is the morning after pill really a "commonly prescribed" drug?
Internal e-mails exchanged between Planned Parenthood employees, and provided to the Globe by an attorney who filed a wrongful firing lawsuit on behalf of a former executive, indicate the drug's manufacturer sells Plan B kits -- with one or two pills in each -- to Planned Parenthood clinics at a ''special" price of $4.25 apiece. The kits are usually sold to consumers for about $30.
The price per kit Planned Parenthood pays is 25 cents lower than the discount rate its maker, Barr Laboratories, offered public agencies.
Planned Parenthood said its distribution of emergency contraception has grown by 4,484 percent since 1995. In 2003, the most recent year statistics are available, it distributed 774,482 emergency contraception kits. A spokeswoman, Elizabeth Toledo, said the agency distributes some kits for free or at sliding rate scales, though she declined to provide specifics.
Birth Control pills are irrefutably "commonly prescribed" pharmaceticals. Plan B is nothing but birth control pills repackaged with clear dosage for emergency contraception.
The medicine itself is commonly prescribed, and state law can and does compel pharmacies to stock it, even Wal Mart's pharmacy. It wants to run a pharmacy, it has to stock plan B and the like.
Plan B is a type of birth control pill. Pharmacies don't have to stock every single brand or type of birth control pill. They stock the brands and types that are most commonly used in their areas. (They suffer a financial loss if they don't sell them by their expiration date.)This is true of all classes of drugs. It would be impossible for one pharmacy to carry every single drug in every single class. If the need arises, they can order it from a warehouse.
This happened recently when one of my patients needed vancomycin. Although it's an antibiotic, and antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs, it isn't a commonly prescribed antibiotic in the outpatient setting. My patient had to wait a day to get her medicine.
Plan B may or may not be commonly prescribed in the area that this particular WalMart is located. I suppose that will come out in the course of the trial.
Actually, it's the prescribing habits of the physicians in a community that determine whether or not a medication is commonly used, and thus whether or not the pharmacy stocks it. If a lot of doctors prescribe it, then it makes sense for the pharmacy to keep it in stock, otherwise they just make a lot of extra work for their pharmacists by requiring they order it up.
Physicians have no idea what is and what is not stocked in the pharmacy, so the pharmacy's inventory has no influence at all on what drugs they use.
Actually, it's the prescribing habits of the physicians in a community that determine whether or not a medication is commonly used, and thus whether or not the pharmacy stocks it. If a lot of doctors prescribe it, then it makes sense for the pharmacy to keep it in stock, otherwise they just make a lot of extra work for their pharmacists by requiring they order it up.
Physicians have no idea what is and what is not stocked in the pharmacy, so the pharmacy's inventory has no influence at all on what drugs they use.
