We have seen her recent reelection campaign videos of how she had ran all the Oxy-docs out of Florida.. while not talking about all the increased Heroin use/abuse/deaths. Has anyone noticed that she has been MIA after Matt Grant ambushed her and presented her with 200+ comments WESH’s FB page got after one of his first expose on the denial of care of chronic painers.
The FL BOP’s special committee on denial of care to chronic painers in FL are working on some “fixes” that will probably look good on paper but the reality of it all will not budge the needle on denial of care. They have a target date of the end of 2017 to have everything in place.
Gov Scott is “termed out” , but Bondi will be 53 when her current term expires 2018… Most likely, she will be running for some other office .. perhaps Governor … So that during her election campaign in 2018 she will be able to brag about all has been accomplished during her time in office to get rid of the “oxy-docs” while protecting the access of chronic painers to the meds they need/deserve… All the while ignoring the increase use/abuse/deaths from Heroin.
But in the interim… IMO.. she will remain MIA on this issue.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that the BOP has very limited authority… they can fine, suspend, revoke a Pharmacist’s license, but.. when something illegal is involved .. diverting drugs, pt abuse/harm or some other things that may involve jail time.. the AG’s office is the entity that would pursue action in those issues.
What I understand as to the actions of the special committee… is to force Pharmacists to have 2 hrs of education on chronic pain… How this is going to get them to ignore their corporate employer’s policies .. like WAG’s “good faith policy” … or how it is going to get the drug wholesaler to stop rationing to pharmacies and prescribers to start more aggressively treat pain.
If you also noticed, the DEA has only been present at ONE of the THREE meetings so far… and we have no confirmation that the DEA’s position is going to change on this whole issue.
Filed under: General Problems
It’s not this bad in California…yet. I feel sorry for those pharmacists in Florida. No one is coming out and saying outright that the pharmacists are being held responsible for causing the problem, for not fixing the problem and for compounding the situation by withholding medications from legitimate pain patients. Yet the various “Leviathans” in this situation are treating the pharmacists as if they are the responsible entity in all of this. The State (in the guise of the DEA, the state DOJ and the BOP) has made it clear through thinly veiled threats that pharmacists are criminals that haven’t been arrested yet. The other Leviathan is the management of the chain drug stores. Their main concern is keeping the share holders happy without overly pissing off the very people that justify their existence, the customers. The employees are less of a consideration and are at the bottom of the food chain within this group. This hierarchal arrangement essentially guarantees that the pharmacies keep the revenue moving into the corporate coffers from the pharmacies. The pharmacies can only accomplish this if they aren’t shut down by the enforcers and by keeping the production at or above management predicated levels. So in addition to the State, the corporate intimidators essentially prohibit the pharmacists from filling anything that the pharmacist isn’t 110% sure about in terms of legitimacy and contains zero technical inaccuracies. The littlest Leviathan is the corporate wholesale chain. The pharmacies have to procure the wares that they sell from somewhere. Companies like McKesson and Cardinal supply the pharmacies with the manifold prescription drugs that they dispense. They’ve been “rationing” the DEA designated controlled substances to the pharmacies. So the pharmacists have a limited supply of narcotic pain relievers that they can dispense. The pharmacists will try and hold the limited inventory for their established, long term pain patients first, if they can. It’s my understanding that corporate drug store management has ordered this practice to cease. It’s first come, first serve. To the uneducated member of the public (and that’s most everyone), it appears that the pharmacists are the ones responsible for the suffering of the chronic pain patients. The truth is, that between the State, the corporate managers and the wholesalers, the pharmacists are being threatened with the loss of their freedom, their livelihood-generating license, their current status of employee of and the ability to procure adequate amounts of the products that generate the revenue stream.
The above named Leviathans are the responsible parties. They are confronted with a problem that is in reality, a set of failed public policy measures of of the State, specifically another facet of the War on Drugs, aka Whack a Mole. Each of those lumbering public and private bureaucratic entities are lazy and lack the creativity to effectively deal with the mess. It’s much easier to push the responsibilities off on the pharmacist, the least organized and least powerful of any of the involved entities. I don’t bring the prescribers into this because the overwhelming majority operate in good faith. The bad actors are a relative few of the majority of those writing the narcotic prescription orders and shouldn’t be that hard to single out.
This unholy trinity of self absorbed incompetents does not give a damn about the innocents that suffer on account of the political brinksmanship that is played out in all of this. They only care about appearing effective to justify their budgetary existence, to satisfy the stockholders and to look like the white-hatted cowboy saving the widows and orphans from the despicable Norco Nick and his band of desperadoes, the Oxy Boys. The political agenda that is interwoven through all of this boggles the mind and turns the stomach. Public safety seems to be the prevarication that all of this is hiding behind.
That brings us to this Bondi character. She brags about all the good she’s done in her role of the dutiful drug warrior. The truth is that she has accomplished very little. The bad actors that she has claimed as scalps on her bandoliers, are replaced given time. On that thought, how many of these prescribers were really bad apples? How many decent prescribers were entrapped by undercover provocateurs? How many were flogged for charting and record keeping that the State deemed substandard? How many were accused of prescribing for indications or for dosing regimens and quantities that were deemed inappropriate by people who have yet to spend a day in medical school, little alone four years premed, four years medical school and a two to four year residency? How about the addicts that would have relied on the bad actors with an Rx pad and a DEA number? Some are dead. Some are in cages. The rest of them simply went back to heroin or another drug of choice or relocated to another state. They get replaced because in 100 years of keeping statistics, the per capita percentage of addicts hasn’t changed, in spite of the various Prohibitionist policies. If her efforts were truly that effective, I would not be here writing this. The politicos have written law after law to combat the illegal narcotics market. These laws always have impacted the innocents, the legitimate chronic pain suffer, i.e., the weakest and most vulnerable people in the domain of all participants. They are not spared and end up as collateral damage because the base philosophy seems to be that it’s better to punish nine innocents than let one addict score. The State can prescribe or proscribe any behavior that it wills. That does not speak to the morality or ethics of such a law. Most of these laws have proven to be fuzzy, feel good measures that get people re-elected but accomplish very little in effecting real and lasting change.
At the end of the day, the perception is that pharmacists are denying legitimate pain patients their vital medicines. Those of my profession are being made out as the mustachio-twirling, black stove pipe hatted villain. The truth is that between the Keystone Cops, a clown car full of politicians and a cadre of boardroom bandits, we are being directed at gun point and our hands are tied; We can’t do the job that we signed on to do when we first got that acceptance letter from pharmacy school.
What you might not know is that AG the famous “blondi”, has put a limit on the amount of controlled substances that each pharmacy may order. That limits pharmacies to 5000, units, i.e. Pills per month. NO MORE. She refuses to budge or listen, regardless of how many of the population needs these controlled substances, prescribed by legitimate doctors for legitimate patients! Five thousand may sound like a lot per pharmacy, but when you start adding up long acting pain meds, breakthrough pain meds, benzodiazepines for all the anxiety you have to deal with in chronic pain, along with people who aren’t in chronic pain, but suffer from anxiety, muscle spasms and the like, cough preparations, surgeries, acute injuries, etc., and 5,000/pharmacy just isn’t very generous! That also includes the the fact that the largest chains have their own limits, which no one knows how many.
Regarding the articles that have been in the paper this past week every day???, (oh, and the head DEA agent in Florida granted the article a Skype interview), it’s not them, it’s,these “highly dangerous and addictive pills), that are the problem!!! She witnessed herself a “homeless man” buying 800.00 in these “highly addictive pills” counting out his “20.00 bills and front of the pharmacist”, and “both of them should have been arrested on the spot”. I was appalled at these accusations. How did she know he was homeless? Maybe he saved up his money, and didn’t have extra to buy new clothes, and was in too much pain to shower. Did she read his mind? Because, the last time I checked, most homeless don’t take 800.00 to buy pain meds, and use them to abuse. They would choose cheaper alcohol, or crack, but they sure wouldn’t have a doctor’s script and buy meds! It infuriates me that she had the gall to say that to the press!! How dare she pass judgement on an observation!! That’s how the article ended. That unfortunately is how our lives are going to end, if this doesn’t stop!!!
Your last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article!