Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Paging Doctor Virgin

They’re at it again, folks. Some pharmacists in Missouri have refused to fill a woman’s legally prescribed birth control medication. They’re “morally opposed” to it. They’re morally opposed to doing their jobs. I know, I know, we’ve written about this before and it’s roughly the same song and dance. But it irritates me so. When on earth did these overblown stock clerks in white jackets get so full of themselves as to second-guess the decisions of an individual, a doctor, the local and federal government, and the fucking United States Supreme Court? Who the fuck do these people think they are?

And morally opposed? I’m morally opposed to making printouts for my boss because he never figured out how to open attachments and to fixing everyone’s goddamned mistakes here around my office, but you know what? I do it. You know why? Because they pay me to. You do your job, you go home, and you bitch about it to your spouse. That’s the American way. So shut up about it before I come over there and smack that self-satisfied shit-eating grin off your face.

1 comment:

Matthew Smith said...

This is a disturbing story and is something that happens more frequently than it is reported. In truth, most prescription censorship happens without patient knowledge. In most pharmacies, the phamacist bears the primary responsibility for re-ordering medication to replace what has been dispensed (some of the larger chains use computerized systems to replace every pill that leaves the store, but this is not an industry standard). I worked in a pharmacy in which the head pharmacist would not order heavy duty pain medications (Dilaudid, Oxi Contin, etc.) because he "did not want to make his store a robbery target". In truth, he didn't want his store filled with addicts and AIDS patients.

Then again, I worked in another pharmacy that did big business with pain management centers, dispensing literally tens of thousands of morphine tablets each week. The pharmacist there was carted off in leg and ankle shackles...so perhaps my first boss had the right idea all along.