A case is filed against one of our Osco Pharmacists trying to practice her "Conscience Law" which states:
A pharmacist who objects to filling a particular type of prescription on the grounds that to do so would violate the pharmacist's ethical or religious principles and who has stated this conscientious objection in writing to the pharmacist's supervisor, shall not be required to fill such a prescription and may not be disciplined by any administrative authority for refusing to fill the prescription.
This falls on the fact that the pharmacist will not BLOCK the filling of it -- which means they won't transfer it out or decides he/she wants to destroy the Rx.
In this Osco case, the Pharmacist asked the patient to return at a later time, probably when the 2nd shift pharmacist who didn't have this issue would be available to fill.
Blagojevich said,"No delays. No hassles. No lectures." This aggrevates me on two levels. First, that pharmacist didn't sound like she was "lecturing" on the issue. Second, "No Delays?" What the hell does that mean? In law, that means soo many things. No delays--- I WANT IT NOW! (because I don't want to wait). Or No delays--- What do you mean you don't have it in stock?!!
This is coming from the man who passed the law of all Insurance parties to cover Birth control (which I have no problem with). I haven't seen the actual law, but A LOT of women started arguing with me saying that the new law stated that ALL Birth control was FREE and that I was compelled to give it to them without cost or prescription. (Luckily, they didnt complain to the Governor!)
If planned parenthood is the ones prescribing these emergency OCPS, let them dispense them. This way there would be no issue.
If this law does pass, I horror to see what comes of it. Sooner or later they will tell all the pharmacist not to get in the way of what doctors prescribe; ie.. over-prescribing of pain killers, or excessive dosing of non effective antibiotics. Which is our jobs. Ethics guide numerous choices that shape our lives. And issues such as abortion, contraception, assisted suicide are issues that a lot of people feel compeled to act on.
In this case, as long as the act does not totally BLOCK the filling of the Rx, it should not be an issue. That pharmacist gave a way for that patient to fill it -- by offering to have another pharmacist to dispense the medication. By doing this, the pharmacist preserved both parties beliefs and did not force the pharmacist's beliefs onto the patient--- nor did any "lecturing" occur. What angers me is that in turn, the patient complained and issued a complaint to IDPR (which supported the pharmacist at the time.) Eventually, this trickled its way down to the Governor's office and now the patient is forcing HER beliefs onto us.
150 days to go!
Update: Its a funny way how things are worded; either that or CNN is very bias!
The Emergency Rule is stupid.
A pharmacist who truly do not want to fill ANY prescriptions (no matter if it is an oral contraceptive pill or a questionable script on pain-killers) can simply lie and say "We do not have it in stock ... what other pharmacy do you want me to check?" At least in this case, that Osco pharmacist was honest about his/her beliefs.
"Under the new rule, if a pharmacist does not fill the prescription because of a moral objection, another pharmacist must be available to fill it without delay."
No delay, huh? Yeah!! It would be nice to have more than just 1 pharmacist on the premieses ALL day. =) At least that way ... I get my lunch or dinner breaks!
Blagojevich is such an idiot. I'm pro-choice but a law forcing pro-life pharmacists to fill emergency OCPS is uncalled for. It's just not right making someone do something against their will.
"another pharmacist must be available to fill it without delay"
This shows just how clueless Blagojevich is. Doesn't he know most community pharmacies have only one pharmacist on duty at a time??? What he's proposing is neither practical nor financially feasible. Man, I just hope he doesn't get re-elected.
the governor is a moron, but he is playing to the crowd.
im a little bit opposite of cecil but we kinda see eye to eye on this issue. im a pro-lifer but i strongly believe that people have the right to choose as long they, themselves, take responsiblity of the consequences.
the pharmacist was really stupid to impose their own beliefs on that person. it opens a huge can of worms and the ruins our already declining reputation as a trusted profession. the pharmacists should have thought of a less dramatic action plan instead of being a total self-righteous asshole.
i would have called the md and had the rx changed. i dispense the full 21 tablets instead of 4 tablets and i have the direction changed to USE AS DIRECTED. i dont even want it documented that i dispensed a prescription for morning after pill. i want to plead ignorance, plead "i understood it was for birth control and the patient understood the directions". that way, it covers my ass if the patient, after 5 years, sues me for having some psychological disorder b/c i "helped her" abort her unborn child.
im just glad im out of the stressful environment of retail and into a safer realm of dispensing radioactive drugs.
I am a pro-choice guy too;
Its a womans body before anything else...
Frank reminded me that this was the same guy who wanted to start busing elderly up to Canada on a monthly basis. Well, this didn't fall thru!!!
Hopefully he falls on his face for this one too!
New Rule: Pharmacists have to fill prescriptions. As our audience seems to already know, more and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections.
Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job.
Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.
In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.
"Bill", I dunno if the comment above is spam or not, but just to let u know, I AM a doctor and so is alot of pharmacists. 6 years didnt get me a docturne in tree surgery so get your facts straight. Now that i think of it, this must be spam because its too stupid to be a REAL person probably some spam-bot.
An argument such as this cannot be rebudled with a "If everyone jumps off a bridge, WILL YOU?" Rhetorical as it is DUMB.
it is sad that you are so ignorant
what the hell is a docturne?
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/bios/
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/
Correction:
Doctor of pharmacy.
Doctor of Tree surgery.
I GUESS these are the same.
It still doesn't change the fact that this guy cannot distinguish from being liberal and being ignorant. But, I GUESS it is the same as well.
Anyone who can describe being a pharmacist above being a tree surgeon really doesnt know what they are talking about. Its like me saying anyone in the computer science field has the job of saying, "Did you reset your computer?" And I could say that If any of you thought otherwise then you all suck in bed and you believe in slavery. This is not the way to get your point across.
Ken did u post this??
no, it wasn't me!
i was just letting you know the source.
should a community's pharmacist really be the moral leader? i mean, honestly. if your morals get in the way of doing your job properly, find another job. to an extreme, it'd be like an amish person fixing your car.
No one is saying that the pharmacist is a moral leader. That Osco pharmacist just bascially told the patient to return at a later time so it could be dispense by another pharmacist. S/he didn't give a lecture to the patient about any moral beliefs.
Besides, I truly do not believe EVERY doctors out there write for birth control pills. Some probably do recommend their patients to see someone else too -- So should they get another job too?!??!
pharmacists are in the retail industry. it's like going to the store to buy a chicken and being told to come back later when the non-vegetarian cashier is working. you may not receive a lecture, but you just want your chicken.
a store that discriminates against me as a meat eater would lose my business. doctors who turn down patients lose those patients. if you think retail pharmacists have the luxury of turning down customers, then that's your prerogative.
personally, i don't favor government intervention. but stores that allow pharmacists to withhold medicine solely for arbitrary reasons have a duty to advertise this fact, so consumers can take their business elsewhere.
at the same time, i find it repugnant that a pharmacist would allow his personal viewpoint affect how he performs his professional duties, which are to prepare and dispense drugs to the people who need them. let's forget about birth control right now. should pharmacists be allowed to withhold HIV medicines to customers they think live an "unclean" lifestyle?
by the way, you should exercise restraint before you start leveling accusations. i sign my comments.
don't get so defensive. i just ask you if you did it. and it would shock me if you did, because i know you sign your comments.
Oh well, no point. The Bill will probably pass anyhows. I have no problem filling any type of birth control, but i do not want this to escalade to the point where they will pass an act that tells me that I have to FILL everything the doctor orders. If i dont feel its right, i wont fill it; morals aside.
As far as I know, a pharmacy is in the business of filling prescriptions, not passing moral judgment on those who want their prescriptions filled. This particular issue however, should be a business question rather than a regulatory one in my opinion. Rather than requiring legislation, it seems to me that clear company policy is needed. If the pharmacy specifically sets a policy that allows its pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions based entirely on personal moral objections, then fine. The pharmacy should make sure the public is aware of this policy however, so that the public has the choice to take their business elsewhere before taking the time to attempt to get a prescription filled only to be told to come back later. Don’t waste my time by imposing your own form of morality on me.
If however, the pharmacy doesn’t have such a policy then a pharmacist ought not refuse to fill a valid prescription simply because of a personal moral objection (of course if there are other issues with the prescription - like it conflicts with another med, it has been overprescribed, etc. or there are other medical and/or legal issues with the prescription then the pharmacist should obviously have the right to not fill the prescription). It seems to me however, not filling a prescription ONLY because the particular medication doesn't fit into the pharmacists own brand of morality could damage the reputation of the pharmacy and hurt business for the pharmacy’s owner. If a pharmacist feels that s/he will have a moral problem filling certain prescriptions, then perhaps s/he needs to work for a pharmacy that allows its employees to impose their own morality on the pharmacy’s customers. Personally, I would pass on taking my business to such an establishment.
When I go into a store, I don’t expect to be told to come back later because the employee doesn’t agree with my product choice. That isn’t fair to me, the customer, or to the store, the employer, in that my time has been wasted and the store has just lost business. Besides, by allowing employees to choose what they will sell at the store can get pretty tricky in that people have such widely varying ideas of morality. For example, there are some Christians who don’t believe in any form of birth control, including condoms. Would it be right for a store employee to refuse to sell condoms to someone based on his/her own morality even though the store sells the product? In my opinion, that employee should be promptly sacked! If you don’t want to sell condoms, don’t work at a place that clearly offers them for sale. Pretty simple. Or, as Ken said, what about vegetarians? I am a vegetarian, but I don’t see how I have the right to impose my choice on others. What if I worked for a grocer and refused to ring-up anyone who purchases meat? Um…sorry, I don’t believe in eating meat and there is no one else here to ring you up (small grocery store I guess!) so you’ll have to come back later. Sorry that you wasted your time shopping here and too bad for the store’s owner who just lost a sale.
As i mentioned the the entry this is one of the points of my dissapointment.
Imposing a view upon another. If you think that the pharmacist imposed their moral views, why don't u think this law imposes a similar view back, especially after the words of our dear govenor. If you think it was WRONG to force views onto the patient, do u think its WRONG to reciprocate it back to the pharamcist?
The other point was it escalading into something bigger. Which doesnt seem plausable now, but seeing and hearing what people have to say it is something more likely to happen.
This is want i want to see.
I know that everyone has an opinion of on this matter and anyone that has read this blog knows my view on this issue.
What I totally object is some jerk making an entry and hides behind some "talking head" to justify it as "gospel"(pun intended). It was truly a cowardly entry meant more to insult than debate.
There is definitely no right answers here and this has opened a can of worms that this website does so often.
Then again, its kinda cool to see what people that "religously" view this blog think on this matter.
The problem of this issue is that its gonna create a precendence for something more serious, like control drugs and painkillers.
I don’t think we (Patrick and I) are disagreeing too much here. Like I said, I don’t really think it should be a legislative issue. But, and this may be where we disagree, I do think pharmacies, rather than individual pharmacists, should have the freedom to decide the pharmacy’s policy on these types of issues. In other words, Walgreen’s for example, should be able to implement a company-wide position on this issue. Otherwise, the individual pharmacists may hurt the company’s ability to do business if they continually refuse to fill prescriptions because they don’t morally agree with the product they are being asked to fill. How is that fair to the company that is losing business?
I know that there is a “Conscience Law”, but, like with anything else, there is a bit of interpretation that needs to be done here. I will take a very extreme example. Let’s say that there is a pharmacist who joins a religion that does not believe in prescribing most modern medicines. Say s/he submits a list in writing that pretty much makes it so s/he can only prescribe five percent of the medicines available based on her moral beliefs. Should the pharmacy have no recourse? Should they be forced to employ such a pharmacist? Is that at all fair to the pharmacy or its customers? Literally reading this “Conscience Law” would seem to indicate that the pharmacy is stuck. Is this really how the “Conscience Law” is to be interpreted? I doubt it. Like I said, this is a very extreme and improbable case, but I am just trying to make the point that the “Conscience Law” requires interpretation.
Furthermore, I am not arguing that pharmacists should be forced to fill prescriptions with which they don’t agree. I just think this choice should come when a pharmacist decides where to work. If you want to pick and choose which prescriptions to fill based on your own version of morality then work for a pharmacy that has a policy allowing that kind of flexibility or open your own business (flexibility is one of the benefits of working for yourself). I guess I am saying that I don’t believe a pharmacy should be forced to fill prescriptions it would rather not; however the individual pharmacist should follow company policy on such issues. If s/he doesn’t like company policy then do what people in other professions would most likely do, quit and find a new company for which to work.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2117374
more!