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Obama HealthCare Battles and Reports from The Frontline… What do some Pharmacist say?

Posted Aug 22, 2009 by Al Mccray

Updated Aug 22, 2009 at 11:27 AM

What do the health care professionals have to say about the health care, ObamaCare and the health care industry, especially the Pharmacists?

When the ObamaCare forces and their allies have quietly retreated and move on to other agendas ...
When the protestors have trashed their anti ObamaCare signs ...
When the town halls have returned to civic meetings, bridge and bingo games ...
and when the media staff, camera and lights are wrapping up their cables ...

... the health care professionals will still be actively engaged with treating the insureds and well as the uninsureds. Their only agenda is to promote good health, treat you and make your life a lot healthier. You see this is their chosen life profession with politics and all of the camera, lights and microphones in their faces.

Merle Need

Licensed Pharmacist for 33 year, Pharmacy owner in Seffner, Tampa, FL

“As a pharmacist I feel there is a lot of inequity in the current system.

To reduce the cost of health care, there needs to be TORT reform, where lawyers cannot get ridiculously huge settlements for themselves and their clients.  The settlements need to be more reasonable.  Secondly, PBM’s (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) need to open up their books.  These people make contracts with employers and pharmacies and pharmacy chains.  These people make the difference between the two contracts as well as transmittal fees for each prescription.  A fellow pharmacist received one of their checks by mistake.  They made as much money as he did on the claim and all they did was process the claim.  A third thing that is vital is for the government to level the playing field.  Make it mandatory for all manufacturers to sell to everyone at the same price.  This would keep PBM’s from starting their own mail order pharmacies and forcing people to go to them.  Walgreens did an analysis a few years ago that showed they really did not save any employers any money, but they would not allow community pharmacies to do this at a profitable level.  So, Tort reform, open books for PBM’s, and level pricing for manufacturers would make a great start.”

Leke Alli, Pharmacist for 22 years,

Pharmacy owner in Carrolwwod, Tampa, FL

“It’s been interesting watching the debate and shoutings over the healthcare reform.

The shouters for the most part have no concrete points of debates, hence the yelling to drown out the other side.

I practiced as a pharmacist in the UK for about twelve years before relocating to the US ten years ago, hence I can claim quite an experience of both a public and market-driven healthcare system. For the most part, the public system is a better option than the market-driven, insurance/pharmaceutical manufacturer-led system with regards to the community as a whole.

A lot of the TV talks and e-mails detracting the public option are full of lies and innuendos. The public system in the UK called the National Health Service (NHS) is very successful and does deliver a good patient care to everybody irrespective of socio-economic status. I had a lot of elderly patients or poor people in the UK who never had to worry about the cost of their medication. For the most part, the NHS provides almost all generics and brand medications available in the US market as well. Occasionally, on rare cases, some new drugs are evaluated for efficacy and costs before being allowed into the system. This is not common and probably only about three or four drugs a year. The situation is still better than “Drug not covered” or “Needs Prior Authorization” that is common around here. Denial of certain drugs by HMO in the USA is an everyday occurrence. For all my twelve years of practice in the UK, every drug written for a patient by a doctor was dispensed.
The issue of elderly or disabled people being put to death is preposterous. What nonsense? Wonder why we still have any elderly people left in the UK.I worked in UK hospitals and vividly remember elderly patients not wanting to be discharged because they were quite comfortable in the hospital, since they didn’t have to pay.

In the UK, you see your primary care doctor on days-appointment just like the US. If you need hospital care, your doctor forwards your case to the local hospital where you are assigned a consultant/specialist doctor. You are put on the waiting list depending on the severity of your case. This might be a few months depending on the work load of the consultant. If your case is an emergency, then you go in immediately. I have had a personal experience of my wife being wheeled into the hospital on emergency. She was in the ICU for a couple of weeks and we had a baby in the NICU for a month. All these cost us nothing. We did not pay a dime. Imagine how much copay to your HMO here.

The UK is not necessarily the best but its sure a lot better than the market-driven system. The major complaint I have is the abuse of the system by the public.
And if you don’t like the public system, you can always stick to the private insurance system. This also obtains in the UK. I have family members and friends that have used the private system for quick service, and nobody is complaining.

I think the noise and opposition to the public system right now is led by different forces
1. The insurance industry for their bottom line
2. The ill informed public
3. Political reasons by those that do not want this administration to succeed.

Guess who loses at the end of the day?”

The battles over health care continues to rage on, but somehow I sense a slight cooling off.  But there are more health care professionals to have their say.
Continue to follow, ” ObamaCare Battles, Reports from the Frontlines.

send me your comments,  almccray @ aol.com