\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span> My doctor vanished for a few minutes and I looked around. The clinic was pleasant enough, as were both the staff and my doctor, who returned a few minutes later with some filled-out prescription forms. \u201cI\u2019m going to give you a course of antibiotics. Take one a day in the morning with food. Just one<\/span><\/b>.\u201d <\/span>[emphasis mine<\/i>]<\/p>\n\u201cOK.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cAnd here\u2019s a prescription for oxycodone. Take two a day.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cOxycodone?\u201d It felt weirdly glamorous to be getting some oxy for the first time.<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cYes. It\u2019s a terrific cough suppressant.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cOK.\u201d In my head I was thinking, \u201cOxy \u2014 woohoo!\u201d\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but in my body I was thinking, \u201cBut I also really would like to stop coughing up jelly-like deep-sea creatures into my dinner napkins.\u201d So I walked three minutes to the pharmacist and picked up my antibiotics, and then my oxy. My pharmacist looked at me gravely: \u201cYou know, you\u2019re very lucky your doctor gave me this discount coupon on your oxycodone prescription.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cOh \u2014 why\u2019s that?\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cThis drug [use drug name; get sued] is $900 a pop.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cWhat?!\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cYes, but for you, with a coupon this first time, it\u2019s $90.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cFor a cough suppressant?\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cNot just any cough suppressant. This is oxycodone.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cI suppose so.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cAnd there\u2019s a bit of decongestant added to it as well.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cHard to argue with that.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWell, the bronchitis does not clear up, and it turns into pneumonia, and our fearless protagonist finds that he has developed a physiological dependence on the Oxy.<\/p>\n
He then gets back to his doctor in Canada:<\/p>\n
So I stopped.<\/span> [the Oxy] And I returned to Canada, where my doctor looked at my prescriptions, puzzled. First, my antibiotic: \u201cYour Florida doctor prescribed you this? [Name drug; get lawsuit.] We used to give this to two-year-olds and, even then, for your body weight, this ought to have been at least three times a day at quadruple strength<\/span><\/b>.\u201d<\/span> [emphasis mine<\/i>]
<\/span> \u201cOK, but what about oxycodone? You have to admit, it did stop me from coughing.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cYes, but you also almost became addicted to a $900-a-pop drug.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cTrue.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> \u201cAnd just to be clear, you were deliberately underprescribed antibiotics to keep you from getting well so as to ensure that you\u2019d keep going back for more visits and repeat oxy prescriptions. And your doctor was obviously in on some kind of racket with the pharmacist \u2014 all that coupon nonsense.<\/span><\/b>\u201d<\/span> [emphasis mine<\/i>]
<\/span> \u201cAll true.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span> Within 48 hours, my pneumonia essentially vanished thanks to two azithromycin tablets. But it took almost a week for The Hand to permanently unclasp itself from my skull. [Oxycodone dependency]<\/span> Now that the experience is over, I feel as if I\u2019d driven through a speed trap in a small Ozark town and had been at the mercy of the local Boss Hogg. All of this because of bronchitis. What if I\u2019d had something bigger than mere bronchitis? What bigger and scarier speed traps would await me or you or anyone else down the US medical road?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe system does not just prey on Canadians, you know, it preys on all of us.<\/p>\n
What’s more, my guess is that there was no (illegal) kickback arrangement, but rather that the pharmacy was either owned in whole or part by the doctor, or operating as a part of the clinic (my money is on the latter), so there were no illegal payments per se, just business.<\/p>\n
To paraphrase Sal Tessio, “It’s nothing personal it’s only business.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Author, and Canadian, Douglas Coupland describes his experience with the American healthcare system. The short version is that he had a cold that became bronchitis, and he went to a clinic, and got a prescription for an antibiotics and oxycodone(!) as a cough suppressant. I do understand that opiods are effective cough suppressants, codeine used …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1046],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}