Does Your Doctor Write More Prescriptions Than You Need?

[NashVegas]

Poll question: Does Your Doctor Write More Prescriptions Than You Need?

Here in Tennessee, there's a threat that TennCare - the state run service that covers the otherwise uninsurable - may be pulled. A stunning statistic, accordign to a local channel, claims: The average number of prescriptions per person in the US is 10, but for TennCare enrollees it's 30.

I'm not TennCare but I do live in Tennessee, and I have visited a clinic - twice - for a simple matter of anti-bodies and was given anywhere from 1 to 3 additional prescriptions I didn't need, and had even said as much. I'm sure HCA thanked him well.

I'd like to see just how rampant this is.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. You work for an insurance company or something?

[NashVegas]

2. Not At All

Just tired of the rising prices.

When you have a (relatively) small co-payment, it's a shock to look at the bill and see what the stuff would cost without the help from insurance.

I once had all four of Dr. Feelgood's prescriptions filled without a second thought. And only later saw the total would have been $178 w/out co-pay.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

11. Don't blame the doctors. Blame the insurance company.

They're always reporting record profits. They don't NEED to continually raise prices on you. Yet they still do.

[Padraig18]

3. My doctor is quite sparing with prescriptions.

Mine will give you a 'scrip if you need it, but more often than not, he will reccomend an OTC product or some other palliative therapy/remedy. He's VERY careful about 'scrips for antibiotics, opiates and tranquilizers, etc. .

:)

[ohio_liberal]

4. I've never had a prescription I didn't need....

I do think my pediatrician hands out unnecessary/useless prescriptions, specifically antibiotics for common colds, etc., just to pacify parents.

[Cleita]

5. Could it be that people who don't have prescription coverage,

like myself, go without needed medication?

[luaneryder]

6. No

I have trouble getting what I need for pain control. When I lived in TN I was told by my physician that he was being closely monitored by the DEA, but only for pain and anxiety relieving prescriptions. He could write with impunity for antidepressents, antibiotic, antacid. There was also a clinic in Mountain City, TN that refused to take any patient other than TennCare covered.

[hnsez]

7. He chases me out of the office writing them furiously

[salvorhardin]

8. It's like pulling teeth

to get anything out of my health care providers. For instance, I use hydrochlorothiazide, a piddling little prescription that costs $8 a month. Every single one of the doctors I see at the local hospital know I require it. The last time I was in to see my pulmonologist, a man I've seen perhaps half a dozen times this year, I needed my prescription refilled. I brought the subject up three times in the course of his ten allotted minutes and he kept brushing it off. Finally as he was about to dart out the door I pressed the issue saying, "Can I please have you write a refill for my prescription."

His response was, "Well, you can have your primary do it." Yes, I could have my primary do it, but our hospital now requires an office visit for every prescription written so I would be forced to make an additional appointment with my primary and it would be several weeks (or months) before I could get my very simple longterm prescription refilled. Eventually he consented and dashed off a script, but it made me personally feel like I was asking for something extraordinary and a waste of his time. I can't help but think how an elderly patient who isn't anywhere near as pushy as I am would be at a disadvantage. Wankers.

[tandot]

9. Currently unemployed...I am uninsured since September

I actually haven't seen a doctor in over two years because my copay and deductible was too high (when I still had insurance). Thank God I haven't been seriously sick.

Consumers are targeted by all those ads the Pharmaceutical companies unleash on us daily. Lots of those patients request medications from their doctors.

I had a doctor once prescribing me antibiotics for a cold. Even I knew that this was BS. Colds can't be treated with antibiotics.

Hey, it is all great for the economy. Pharmaceutical companies make huge profits and we pay for it with higher rates for copay and health insurance.

Bush's values: Take it from the poor and give it to the rich.

[Coyote_Bandit]

10. What Doctor?

I am a nearly two year unemployed schmuck in carzy red f*cking JOklahoma. I am very lucky to have catastrophic health coverage - but it comes with a $5,000 deductible and a co-pay above that and doctor visits and prescription meds are not covered. And I do not have any documented health problems. If I go to a doctor it will be because either I am badly hurt or I think I am dying. Seriously.

On edit: I was self-employed, returned to school in my 30's and started a new career. I relocated twice for employment reasons and worked in that new career for two years before being laid-off. I really can't remember the last time I saw a doctor for anything. It was probably about 1996 or so when I experienced a sudden hearing loss due to a viral infection.

[Individualist]

12. No

I also live in Tennessee, and my doctor never prescribes anything I don't need.

[idiosyncratic]

13. Well . . . no, and yes

Because I have "controversial" chronic Lyme disease, it has been very, very hard to get the correct prescriptions.

However, some doctors have been very willing to prescribe psychotropic medicines which are not helpful at all.


It sounds like that TennCare program was a way to scam the State and Federal Medicaid programs.

[Anakin Skywalker]

14. YES. My Doctor Also...

counts Rush Limbaugh as a patient. So I know he's not on the up and up.