Reply #14: Rush was doctor-shopping

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Lord knows I'm neither fan nor defender of Rush, and he did deserve much more than he did. Paey was forging prescriptions, even if it was just for himself...

"In Richard Paey's room, all over his room, there were the raw materials to make prescriptions," says Andringa. "They found a lot of documents that suggested forging prescriptions, copying prescriptions, in order to create new blank prescriptions."

In addition to the blank prescriptions, Andringa says police also found a copy machine, a doctor’s stamp and Nurkiewicz’s DEA number written in Paey’s address book.

"It's a crime to forge prescriptions, which is what he did, and it's a crime to use a forged prescription that you stole in order to get drugs from a pharmacy, which is what he did," Andringa says.

They offered him a plea deal with no jail time, but he rejected it, because he thought the convictions would make it hard to get drugs in the future. Because of the forgery stuff above, he did get convicted on the original charges and under Florida law had to get 25 years. Unfortunately the judge wasn't allowed any discretion in sentencing (which I would argue he should have, but that was a result of everyone's "get tough on drugs" movement).

I don't know if a conviction would or would not make it harder for him to get prescriptions, but he was offered a deal no jail time and the guy is a lawyer himself but he decided to roll the dice and go for it anyway.

The big question is, how do you treat patients in heavy chronic pain that do need unusual amounts of medications?

But because of the forgery, I would argue that this is a different case than Rush's. Not that he should be in jail for 25 years, but he did forge and then reject a jail-free plea bargain.

Somewhat complicated.