Going along with my previous (and popular) socialized medicine post, I have a solution from the pharmacy aspect that I thought of while reading some responses to it.

You see, we shouldn’t have the folks like Walgreens, Rite-Aid (if they are still around), CVS, and the hundreds of independents profiting off of the pain and suffering of our aging and sick population.  We all know that Walgreens charges like cost + $30 on most of their generics, that’s just pure profit and its wrong!  The $4 menu is just suckering you in so they can pass the “savings” off on the bigger ticket items.

The federal government should open its own pharmacy, a huge one, and go 100% mail order for everyone.  They can negotiate directly with the drug manufacturers to drive the cost down, and people will just have one flat copay regardless of drug (the rest will be subsidized by the government).  All citizens will use this pharmacy because it’ll be cheaper than anyone else.  Most insurance plans require mail order anyways, so what would be the big difference doing consultations over the phone (since we do them now anyways).  Sorta like how the VA or Kaiser does it, only on a much larger scale.

Since its the government, it can make its own rules with regard to how many pharmacists/techs it can have.  50 techs to 1 pharmacist?  Sure!  Huge warehouses of nothing by filling machines and techs certified to check off prescriptions? You got it!  You want Cozaar? Too bad you’re getting Diovan and LOVING IT.  Got a complaint? Call this 800 number.  Meds get lost in the mail? Call this 800 number again!

Just think, $5 for Zyvox since the government can tell the manufacturers to either lower their cost or take a hike.  I’m sure they would get a deal also since they run the postal service.

Except… most of you (including myself) would be without jobs because the price would drive down so low that you couldn’t stay in business.  Much like what WalMart did to the local mom-and-pop shops.  At least the cost of drugs (brand name) keeps the chains vs independents in line with each other.  Obviously pharmacists are all about ‘helping the patient’ so our jobs really mean little in the whole grand scheme of things.  Techs on the other hand are set!  You only need a bare staff of pharmacists to just sort through the massive amount of medical data the government would be collecting from filling your prescriptions.

Drug reps would be a thing of the past because doctors wouldn’t have any choice in what they prescribe, it’ll just be what the government approves of.  Hell, maybe they can pay-per-view drug-rep battles to see who’s PPI gets on formulary!

Just a thought you know, because some of you feel that having the government play the healthcare game is a good idea (which I don’t expect you all to agree with me ALL the time, just most of the time when it involves crackheads and Soma).  In fact, the government stepping in is a great idea until they bottom out most of the private insurances (because what private company can compete with the government?  A private company backed by a few billion in shareholder cash that people choose to invest in vs the federal government which is backed by every working citizens taxes that they are forced encouraged to pay.  Lets see who’s going to win!); which turn cause a bunch of layoffs (cue whining), and give them a 4.8 trillion dollar bailout like every other failing corporation gets. But hey! Those laid off people will have AWESOME health benefits regardless if they are contributing taxes or not!

Just a thought I had.  Continue your discussions.

Here I will give my thoughts and viewpoint on the current push to give people socialized medicine in the US.  Feel free to chime in on what you think.

As all of you are quite aware, there is a push in this country to give every man-woman-child government sponsored health-care.  Here I will tell you why this is a horrible idea and is doomed to fail.

Here in the wonderful USA, we already have 2 forms of socialized medicine:

• MediCare – Given to citizens over the age of 65, or to those under 65 who qualify (renal disease, disability, etc)
• MediAid – Welfare

Both of these are wholly sponsored and paid-for by Uncle Sam.  Sure Medicare Part D plans have a small premium, but usually those are taken out of your MediCare check (and are no where near the cost of private insurance).

What this socialized medicine bullshit wants to do, is to give “universal health-care” to people who do not fit within those two categories.  Now mind you, that anyone can go to any county hospital (paid for by the taxpaying citizens of that county) and receive medical care without having the ability to pay.  Most private hospital ER rooms will also give you stabilizing treatment without you showing proof of ability to pay.  That seems pretty damn awesome if you ask me, however people want more.

The big idea that some Americans throw around is that access to health-care is a right.  Let me clarify this for everyone who thinks that way:

HEALTH-CARE IS NOT A RIGHT!

Access to a Doctor is as much as right as having access to a Plumber, a Roofer, an Electrician or anyone else in a specialized trade.  Until the government FORCES AND PAYS people to go to medical school, it is not a right. You see us Doctors, Nurses, Pharmacists? We chose to go into this profession, we weren’t forced into doing it.  Do you see an amendment in the Constitution showing the right to see a medical professional? No. Do you know how to re-shingle your roof, install a shower, fix a rotting foundation, lay brick, or do a bunch of other jobs that you have NO PROBLEM hiring someone to do; but the moment you can’t get in to see the doctor RIGHT NOW (because his/her practice revolves around YOU) the “I HAVE A RIGHT” card gets thrown down as you throw a 2 year old tantrum?   Quit fucking whining about your “right” to see a doctor and be thankful there’s more than 1 doctor in 300 square miles like in some 3rd world countries.  Be thankful we even have people who choose to be doctors, pharmacists and nurses after dealing with shit-ass people like you.

Now that we cleared up that “confusion” that some entitlement douches like to throw around, we can move on why socialized medicine will not work here:

IF ITS FREE, USE UNTIL CANNOT USE ANYMORE!

Irresponsible humans have a nasty of habit of seeing “free” and totally abusing the shit out of it thinking it is indeed free when its not.  Its free to them, but costly to someone else.  Let me give you a situation:  You have a sore throat.  You should probably go and see the doctor but you might want to wait another day.  Judging that you can see the doctor “RIGHT NOW”, are you more willing to go if its going to cost you a $100 copay, or $0 copay?  Now imagine EVERYONE doing this to the same doctors office.  Now get really mad when your appointment is 3 years away, and the doctor sees you for 30 seconds.  Now bitch about something that you get for free off of the backs of the working class.

As evidenced by the MediCare system (why do old people need so many fucking lab tests.. OH ITS FREE!) and the welfare system (I need my Nexium, Diovan, but I only really take my VICODIN), if something is perceived as free it will be used, abused, and taken for granted.   Just look at e-mail and the internet for example.  People believe that email is free, so as a result I get thousands of spam messages a day to my inbox.  People believe that its free for me to run this site, so they have scripts setup to check it every 30 seconds for new content (if you’re slow, you wouldn’t realize that I try to post something every SUNDAY).  Humans abuse what is free.

I’m sure the Canadian and the UK readers will share how most of them have PRIVATE insurance because the socialized stuff has a 4 year waiting list for appointments for the socialized docs.  Hate to say it, but copays filter out the “I must see doctor!” from the “Eh, im bored, lets go get drugs”.  If you don’t believe me, go sit in the ER and see what piddly shit comes in to waste our dollars.

THIS COUNTRY IS BROKE

Yeah, we’re broke.  We bailed out every corporation that should of failed (will Obama bail out my pharmacy and the other independents when the insurance companies force us under? No) and have a few trillion dollars of unaccounted free money (our money) floating around.  Now how exactly are we going to pay for this?  I’m paying into a MediCare system that will be long dried up before I ever get to get a lab or appointment covered by it.  Medicare part D has to have the ‘coverage gap’ to keep it from going broke (faster), and now we want to give subsidized health care to everyone?  Reading above how people abuse what is free doesn’t really make much sense that this is going to financially fly.  The government couldn’t throw a 5 year old’s birthday party without tons of red tape and spending 100x what is would normally cost and there is talk about making them have a hand in our health-care?  I think this whole ‘universal healthcare’ is just a government ploy to give new jobs to the idiots who work on the federal dime so they can keep their meaningless pointless jobs.

So I don’t really know what the future holds if we have socialized medicine in this country.  It might look good on paper, but I think its going to flop.  At least I’ll get my opinions in before the government forbids me from giving them (or maybe the’ll just take over this website like they are taking over everything else in this country).

UPDATE: Look, less than 24 hours and already I’m trying to explain what I wrote.  So this post was to clarify on how I think that healthcare is not a right (which it’s not, disagree if you will)  and two huge issues that any government subsudized plan is going to have (which could apply to ANYTHING that ANYONE pays to service that someone else uses)  It wasn’t “YAR YAR NO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE” like the words some of you are putting in my mouth.  Since /any/ plan that is made by our broke government is going to be 1000% funded on the backs of taxpaying citizens (since obviously doctors aren’t going to take a huge pay cut, pharmacies aren’t going to take a huge pay cut, where is the cash going to magically come from?) these are the concerns I have (and rightfully so).  Like one reader said, we can’t take the usual government approach and throw this together, dust off our hands, and pat each other on the back.  You would think that most of you who dealt with the Medicare Part-D bullshit would understand that.  This is huge, and its with our money, so we should demand that it be perfect, well thought out, or we’re just throwing money away.  And to the federal workers to got offended by my joke about the ‘government conspiracy’, get back to work, quit wasting time reading my website, and dont be so easily offended by the unfaulting sweeping brush that I make jokes under.

Every pharmacist has had to deal with Workman’s Compensation prescriptions at some point in their careers.  They usually involve paper billing (although now Express Scripts, RESTAT and others have made them electronic) and a lot of begging/paperwork to get paid.

Pharmacists see this all the time, but its a little known fact that work-comp has become the “richs mans Medicaid”.  It has spiraled so out of control, and gotten so outrageous that now I view it as just another form of welfare.

How its supposed to work:

You get injured on the job via some fault other than you being an idiot.  Equipment fails, your employer had something go wrong, some freak accident happens.  Work comp then pays  for your doctors visit and medications.  If you cannot perform that job any longer, you find another job doing something that doesn’t require a bad back or missing fingers, etc.  You continue to work, your (former) employer’s work comp insurance premiums go up, and life goes on.

How pharmacists see it work (ie: how it really works):

You were at work and get injured because you’re a fucking lazy idiot (with your head firmly planted up ass) and go to the ER for a smashed pinky finger.  They give you an Rx for 40 vicodin and some ibuprofen and keep you off work for 3 weeks.  You (and your work comp lawyer) then sue your former employer giving you full paid time off.  You relax and go on vacation and do other fun stuff with your wife and kids while receiving a fat work-comp check (and free medications).  You OBVIOUSLY cannot work any longer because of the MENTAL ANGUISH of having a mangled up pinky finger.  It is SO HORRIBLE that you then obtain full disability and never have to work again.

Yeah, its really like that.  I’ve seen people get a few medications (like ibuprofen and like 20 vicodin every other month) and continue to work.  All the work comp pays for is just a few doctors visits a year, and 2 measly prescriptions that are filled once every 45 to 50 days (and they are 20 day supplies at that).  I’ve also seen people who have basically nothing happen to them, go off work fully, get medicare prematurely because they are “disabled”, then have me try to get vacation overrides for their cruise to the Bahamas.

It all comes down to how well you can play up your “injury” and how good of a scumbag work-comp lawyer you can hire.  Work comp is raped to the point where the premiums are outrageous for employers, and more and more people (read: police officers; that’s right, I’m calling your ass out) are comping out just before retirement so they can collect their fat retirement check along with their work-comp check.  Their reason? MENTAL ANGUISH.  Yeah, try to work as a pharmacist for 30 years and see what kind of mental anguish you get from dealing with the same ghetto public without a bulletproof vest, a gun, backup, and a radio to call for help.  Another reason why hanging your head in the public trough of state-worker is the way to go.

If dealing with the scamming-free loading work-comp abusers wasn’t enough (as they brag to you about their next vacation, knowing that you’re working hard and they are just freeloading from a system that cant say ‘no’); processing a work-comp prescription is a nightmare all in itself.  Some companies make you call a 800 number EVERY TIME YOU FILL AN RX so the processor can get approval from the comp adjuster (the person who decides if your drugs are needed for your comp condition, a position that is filled by an idiot with zero medical knowledge what so ever).  Now I admit that it was better then the old days where the pharmacist had to track the adjuster down, but you also got paid a whole lot more for those paper billings vs electronic billings.

Personally, if I was king of the work-comp world, unless your injury left you permanently handicapped or mentally disabled (ie: a vegetable), all of you leeching fucks would be at a desk job, a greeter at Walmart, or any of the 100 million jobs out there that does NOT INVOLVE THE PART OF YOU THAT WAS INJURED.  Just because you are a lazy fuck who got hurt because you had your head up your ass, it doesn’t mean that us HARD WORKING PEOPLE (including those who are on comp yet find another job) HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR FREELOADING LAZY ASS.

Maybe your injury wasn’t your fault, but sure as shit it wasn’t mine, so why should my premiums go up because of your fuckup?  Sounds more and more like the welfare system to me.

A pharmacy without crackheads would be like a Big-Mac without the secret sauce.  The two go hand-in-hand like fat-chicks and spandex.

Have you ever sit to think about the hard work and dedication to be a tried and true crackhead?  The kind of crackhead that makes pharmacists everywhere sigh and cringe as they hear their name on the phone, or see them walk into the front door?

I believe its time for another patient handout!

Tips and tricks on becoming a successful “crackhead”

By: The Angry Pharmacist, RPh

http://www.theangrypharmacist.com

Becoming a successful “crackhead” and inflicting sadist pain upon your pharmacist is not an easy task.  However with these short yet useful tips you shall have your pharmacist begging you to never return.

1. To be a successful crackhead, you must reduce your brain-cell count to above invalid, but way less than average.  Blunt instruments, large amounts of alcohol, illegal drugs, huffing paint, drowning, and other similar brain-reducing acts will aid you in your journey.  The goal of this exercise is to develop the skill (either learned or by trauma) of not grasping simple concepts like numbers.  This important skill will aid you in later tips.
2. Think of a month as not 30 days, but a random number of days between 10 and 25.  Most medications will have warnings that say that it must last one month.  However if YOUR month is only 13 days, it means that obviously you can take more than what is prescribed on the bottle.  This is YOUR medication after all, so it gets to play by YOUR rules and thereby YOUR month.
3. Reading directions is for chumps and nerds.  You take your medication the way that YOUR body tells you.  YOUR body makes the rules that YOUR drugs have to follow.  If your body needs 10 Soma a day, than so be it!
4. Who’s in the boss? Not Tony Danza, YOU are the boss!  Who’s in charge? Charles is NOT in charge, YOU are in charge!
5. Don’t use proper terminology or pronunciation when referring to your drugs.  Everyone says “Soma” or “Vicodin”, but having you refer to your medication as “SOMAS”, “VICO-DANS”, “DAN SOMAS”, or “WATSONS 389″ makes you really stand out in the pharmacists eyes.  Nothing says “I know my pain pills” than reciting the NDC number on that bottle of Watson vicodin.
6. Develop some good stories.  “My medication was lost or stolen” is so 1990’s.  You need to think of some good stories to feed to your doctor and pharmacist so they will feel sad for you.  It helps if you learn to sob on command, or come into the pharmacy loaded so they can really see how much pain you are truly in.
7. Have a black cloud of bad luck encompass you always.  Be the unluckiest person on the planet.  Have anything and everything happen to your pain-pills (but not your high blood pressure pills!).  Martians came and a meteor hit your vicodin bottle!  Go for the gusto!  If you’re loaded while you mumble this story it makes it more realistic (at least to you) thereby making you tell it better!  Remember, YOUR story plays by YOUR rules, and YOUR pain-pills make YOUR rules!
8. Only chumps get all 90 Soma at one time.  Split that Rx up!  Even though you have $5 in your pocket, it should get you at least 3 of the 90 soma you are allowed every month.  Dont worry about such trivial things such as money management, saving for the whole 90, or the added work your pharmacist goes through.  Remember, YOUR money plays by YOUR rules and YOUR shitty 4 tablet partial fills make YOUR rules!
9. Transfer early, transfer often!  Nothing says confusion than getting a partial fill on your pain pills and having 5 fills of 10 tablets splattered across 7 independants and 3 chains!
10. PAY CASH!  Only chumps use insurance for their pain-pills!
11. Money management? Throw all that shit out the window.  You need to piss away your welfare check like its burning a hole in your pocket.  In fact, you have to be so bad that you have to prepay for your soma that’s due TOMORROW or you’ll spend that $30 on something else.
12. Avoid chains!  Their computers are all linked up via magic so they know how much other stores have given you!  Go for the mom-and-pop shops!
13. Become an active part in your treatment, call the pharmacy every 10 mins to see if the doctor OK’d the early refills.  Nothing says “I take my life seriously” than being on top of your medication refill requests.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember calling 10 mins ago because you were loaded, YOU ARE TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR TREAT-.. what was I saying again? Oh, TREATMENT!
14. Fax machines can break, make sure you call the doctors every 10 mins to see if they received your early fill request from the pharmacy.  Doctors LOVE patients who are active in their treatment.  Remember, YOUR name is on your early-refill call-tag so it plays by YOUR rules!
15. Catch fibromyalgia!  That shit is the golden ticket to Watson-Wonka’s Narcotic Factory!  If you catch fibromyalgia you can get ANYTHING!  Plus pharmacists and other health care people LOVE IT when you talk about how bad your fibromyalgia is.
16. Take up acting!  Don’t limit yourself to the “OH JESUS IM IN SO MUCH PAIN” once you hit the pharmacy doors, but also practice it as you walk through the parking lot.  Nothing says that you’re in “OH SWEET JESUS” pain like stumbling and shuffling about in the parking lot AND in the pharmacy.  If you cannot sustain the act for long enough, make sure the sneaky pharmacy doesn’t have cameras outside to record you acting normal only to be hit by the “OH JESUS PAIN” stick once you cross into the store.
17. Wait until the very last second before bringing in your prescription to your pharmacy.  If the pharmacy closes in less than 2 min, you obviously didn’t wait long enough.  Everyone knows that at the end of the day, when doctors and staff have left, pharmacists cant check on those 5 refills that you circled on that Rx from the ER!  Have a DATE to be LATE!
18. Invest in a good variety of pens, or look to see what kind your doctor uses.  You can never be too careful when forging that “ES” after the vicodin or the extra “0″ after the quanity of “10″.
19. Be vocal!  The pharmacists obviously have to do what YOU want them to do, and like cheap labor the louder you yell the faster they work!

Following these simple guidelines will secure your spot in the drugbuyers.com community!

ePrescribing is the stupidest thing to come to pharmacy to date.  It serves no point, it causes MORE errors, plus it costs pharmacies upward of $0.30/rx to receive each prescription.
Lets take a realistic look at this.  Next time you are at work, tally up how many refill requests you send to doctors a day.  Now multiply that by $0.30 and figure out how much a month that surcharge will cost you.  You think that the doctors are paying thousands of dollars a month for this “service?” No! The brunt of the cost is placed firmly on the backs of the pharmacies who get forced into this service by the doctors.  Wait, it gets better.  You know that idiot in the doctors office who points-and-clicks their way to that eRx? Well if they screw up and make any changes (and resubmit it to you), its another $0.30!  Oh, but this time you’ve already filled the Rx and now have to RTS and redo everything.

Despite what SureScripts (and the pharmacies who suck their dick, mostly Good Neighbor Pharmacy and the infamous AmerisorceBergen) claim;  eRx provides absolutely no cost or time savings for pharmacies or pharmacists.  This is because:

1. We have to retype /everything/ due to a lack of a standard sig code table between the 1000’s of pharmacy software vendors out there.  Not to mention that every pharmacy system has the drugs entered in differently as well.
2. It costs us $0.30 for the “privilege” of receiving an eRx, $0.25 for the NCPDP transmission, another $0.50 for the vial and label, another $2 for the labor, and when you’re dealing with horrible PBM’s (mostly MedImpact, MedImpact, MedImpact again, MedImpact and BlueShield), you only make $drugcost + $2.  You lose money with every eRx you get!
3. If the person typing in the eRx makes a mistake, its another $0.30.  If you fax it back for something that’s not covered and they respond via eRx, another $0.30.

If you can get your hands on the Good Neighbor Pharmacy bulletin, you’ll see how much GNP and AmerisorceBergen sucks the sweaty cock of SureScript.  Pharmacists just like you and I voiced their concerns in the GNP newsletter; and ABC and GNP pretty much said “well, deal with it.  You’ll make money we promise”.  Yeah… “Hi! I’m you’re wholesaler, bleed out money because I want to make sure SureScripts looks good”.  I hope GNP pharmacies are getting a huge cut on their wholesaler bill since now ABC is making business desisions for them.

Bruce Roberts, RPh, executive vice president and CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), today hailed the move by AmerisourceBergen Corporation to enroll its Good Neighbor Pharmacy® network of independent community pharmacies as Founding Members of SureScripts, the nation’s largest network provider of electronic prescribing services.  The move will add more than 2,400 pharmacies to the SureScripts network.  NCPA co-founded SureScripts in 2001 to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of the overall prescribing process.

Don’t say that your pharmacy associations don’t do anything for you! Now GNP pharmacies get ass-raped by their own for the low-low cost of only $0.30/eRx.  Here’s something about “quality, safety, and efficiency”: I have seen more errors, decimal point, and unit fuckups via SureScript eRx in one week than YEARS OF PAPER PRESCRIPTIONS.  In fact, I keep a file of all of the eRx fuckups that I get (it gets about 2-3 a day, that’s 15 a week) so when doctors say how WONDERFUL it is, I show them how many lives I have saved.  I’ve seen injection dose written instead of an oral dose, blatant overdoses, everything you can imagine.  I’ve even had controlled substances faxed to 2 different pharmacies 1 min apart for a cash paying patient MULTIPLE TIMES.  Hows that for safety and quality!

Now here’s the dirty secret of eRx’s, and why doctors have their panties moistened by its computer goodness.  You see, the “old fashioned way”, doctors had to sign each Rx they gave out to the patient.  However those days are long gone thanks to ePrescribing.  Now all some idiot has to know is the doctors password and ANYONE IN THE OFFICE CAN SEND OFF PRESCRIPTIONS.  That’s right, this bullshit doesn’t save the pharmacies any time, but it saves the doctor a bunch because its pretty much giving anyone who works in the office the power to sign and give patients legit prescriptions (even for controlled substances!)  Before, you had to steal the doctors pad and write out phonies, now anyone in the office with access to the eRx terminal can splatter out narcotics to every pharmacy that takes eRx’s and nobody would be the wiser.  Oh wait, SureScripts is all about safety and quality.

Did you also know that our omnipotent legislatures are trying to make ePrescribing mandatory for MediCare?  Boy, doesn’t that look really good for SureScript.  I wonder who’s hand is in who’s pants now.  Oh wait, remember Bruce Roberts of NCPA and co-founder of SureScripts?  He’s sucking the big O cock.  I wonder what sort of kickback he’s going to get if SureScripts becomes the ONLY ePrescribing outfit that is raping the backsides of pharmacies.  TRUST YOUR PHARMACY ASSOCIATIONS BECAUSE THEY ARE LOOKING OUT FOR YOUR OWN BEST INTERESTS.

An astute reader sent in the following (Thanks Angry Tech!):

You didn’t even go into how the government is MANDATING doctors to use E-Prescribing to avoid getting a reduction in Medicare reimbursement. (Best link I’ve been able to find is here)

Oh great, so now we’re FORCING the doctors to prescribe in a less-safe and unproven manner to prevent them getting a reimbursement cut.  Looks like the SureScript screwing is all around!  Lets see what Bruce Roberts says about all of this:

“I urge all independent pharmacists to get on board,” Roberts said. “Adoption of electronic prescribing is a critical step in moving the pharmacy profession forward.”

Wait, let me fix the quote so it reflects the writing on the wall:

“I urge all independent pharmacies to get on board.  Adoption of electronic prescribing will make NCPA and myself NOTHING BUT LOTS OF MONEY HAHAHAHAHA! *ahem* This is a good step forward for patient safety and moving the profession (retail is still around?) forward!”

SureScripts and ePrescribing is a solution in search of a problem.  This is how I would fix it:

1. Flat fee.  Make it $50/month for unlimited transmissions.  If you can’t do this then stop lobbying congress, you’ll save a bunch of money by doing that.  Pharmacies are not going to shell out an extra $3-4k/month (unless you’re forced to by AmerisourceBergen) for the “privilege” of receiving what they got for free.
   
2. Publish standard drug/sig codes and influence software vendors to work that into their software.  If we have to retype ANYTHING coming from and eRx, then its not worth a damn thing to us.  This includes typos from the doctors office.
3. Don’t be such a douchebag money-grubbing company that is making up a problem to fix with its own expensive solution.
   

Pharmacy has existed for hundreds of years with sloppy handwriting. Why try to reinvent something better than will just end up being more expensive and more costly than an Rx pad and a fax machine.  I wonder what the legal fallout will be when we get mistakes injected directly into our pharmacy software vs putting them in ourselves.

Update: Dr Grumpy gives what this is like from his side of the fence.

Summer is upon us, and with it comes such delightful things.

The weather is warming up, and that means… BO SEASON! YAY!

For those new here, when the weather warms up, people start to stink.  Its not the subtle smells like cat-piss and just unwashed nasty that’s present during the winter months (because you don’t need to shower if you don’t sweat!™ ).  This is full on brown-underarm stains on that stretched paper-thin wife-beater stank.

Usually you can spot them coming as they walk in the door.  They are always:

• Large
• Breathing via their mouth
• Swinging their arms like they are doing the twist when they walk
• Dressed in a wife-beater stretched to its absolute limits while covered in various stains
• Complain loudly about their Fatsomyalgia™

Now this is when as a pharmacist you need to really pony-up and exert your status on your clerks.  You make THEM wait on this guy.  If you don’t flex your college educated muscles, all of your clerks will scatter and find something more pressing to do (or use the restroom, all of them, at once) leaving you high and dry.  You always have your techs as a human shield, but these mouth-breathers always utter the words we hate to hear the most…

“I wanna talk to a pharmacist”

Just typing those words makes my fingers burn.  At this point, its every pharmacist for him/herself.  The PIC (pharmacist in charge) will throw down the PIC card, and then its whoever been there the least amount of time.  If you are fortunate enough to have an intern, they take the bullet for you, always.  If that intern doesn’t wait on that smelly fat-ass, then you fail (or fire) them for not doing pharmacist-in-training duties.

What adds insult to injury, is that its always some stupid question like “*gasp* WHERES THE MOTRIN *gasp*”.  Its never “WHERES THE SOAP” or “WHERES THE DEODORANT”or “WHAT ARE THE PHARMACOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF TAKING EXTENDED RELEASE POTASSIUM WITH AN ANTI-CHOLINERGIC?” (heh, I’m a nerd, I amused myself with that last one).  Anyway, can you imagine what their houses must smell like?  Can you imagine what their bed must look like?  I wonder what shade of brown/tan their white bedsheets (if they just aren’t sleeping on a bare dirty mattress) are.  Remember kids, if you’re bad in life; you’ll come back to this world as THAT GUYS WIFE-BEATER OR BANANA HAMMOCK.  Now you all know where metformin comes from and why it smells that bad.

Enough about the smells, time for the sights!  Another wonderful welcome sign of summer are what people decide (or better yet, decide not) to wear.

Tube-tops are a wonderful thing, but like guns, alcohol, sharp weapons, and poop; they can be misused and cause a lot of damage.  Murphys law states that if a girl comes in your pharmacy wearing a tube-top, they are the girl who you would NOT want to see in a tube top.  Boobs are supposed to be in the uppermost part of the torso, be well defined and supported, and be pleasant to starelook at (especially if the A/C is cranked to sub-zero *ahem*).  They should NOT be one gigantic shelf that spans from your armpits down to above your belly-button.  Tube-tops are not a substitute for a bra or other feminine chestal support.  If you choose to wear such things, please choose a color that does not turn dark with sweat.  I don’t really need to see sweat-marks accenting your huge unbridled breasteseseseses.

This also applies to short-shorts.  If your fat wraps around the leg-holes of your shorts like the meat being pressed out of a sausage, please don’t wear them.

Tanktops with large arm-holes and no bra?  Yeah, the moment you reach down for something there’s going to be a whole lot of disaster happening.  Oh, don’t worry, you’ll see everything guaranteed.

Spandex anything?  I don’t even think this needs an explanation.

Just because you have a large chest does not mean a low cut top looks good on you.  I realize that it allows you easy access to the treasures you hide under your mommy-bags, but Murphy’s law states that the 0.24 seconds that I glance up I’ll see you doing something that will scar me forever.

Oh, and that one HOT girl who comes in the store wearing next to nothing?  You’ll be at lunch, in the can, or have your head buried in so much DUR/Insurance/Doctors Office madness that you won’t see and won’t care.  Thats how life is for Pharmacists.   If you’re hot, then please make yourself know to the pharmacist before leaving.  Dance, jump, do cartwheels, blow kisses, anything to remind us that the world isn’t full of fat and ugly people wearing spandex and wife-beaters.

Summer is also an excuse for ghetto parents to allow their toddler to just run around in the pharmacy wearing nothing but a dirty diaper.  If the filth and dirty on the outside doesn’t get to you, imagine whats going on INSIDE the diaper.  Its not the poor kids fault; hell, if I could run around a pharmacy with just my boxers I’d do it too.  However its the PARENTS responsibility to make sure that the kid has clothes on while in a public space.  Wait, there’s that R word again.

This one is going to be a doozy, so please read the entire post before writing me a 10 page comment about your life story and how much of an asshole I am.  If you still wish to write me a 10 page comment on how society forced you to get knocked up while on welfare, then I’ll give you a story how society FORCED ME to use rough 2-ply toilet paper to wipe my ass instead of the good soft stuff.

Oh, and for the record, “welfare” here means full blown don’t-have-to-work-all-inclusive aid.  I’m not going to pick apart food-stamps but not free-housing or check, etc.  I say government ticket, I mean the entire government ticket.

This is how I see the welfare system working:

Girl “falls in love” at the ripe age of 16, and through the magic of laziness, hormones, stupidity, and complete irresponsibility allows herself to get pregnant by some loser.  The loser, taking  parenting advice from rap stars and TV idols, leaves that bitch and moves on (”hey, don’t hate the playa, hate the game”).  The mother, now single and with child, goes on the system to get assistance until she can finish school and get a job.  At which point she gets off of the system and pulls herself up by her bootstraps and becomes a model mother and a productive member of society.

That above I have no problem paying for.  Hell, believe it or not, that’s what the system was intended for!  However this is what mostly will happen:

Girl above, when her child is 2 years old, finds another douchebag reject and through the magic of not-fucking-learning-the-first-time gets pregnant AGAIN.  Repeat about 4 more times.  Kids run out of control and tear my shelves apart, and she bitches at me because the Septra suspension for kid #5 is grape flavored and not cherry.

Let it be known herein and throughout the tubes of the Internet.  If you are already on welfare, and you get pregnant again (ie: you already are established on the system and you spread your legs and accept seed again), you are the most irresponsible, stupid, waste of human skin on the planet.  You are nothing more than a receptacle for some dude to keep his sausage warm and serve no use to us other than to leech away our money like a tick on the ass-end of society.  Go and make porn flicks because your only mental and physical skill in life involves your mouth and between your legs.

It blows my mind how absolutely stupid someone can be to be on welfare (you know, implied that you cannot take care of yourself so the state has to take care of you) and bring another child into this world.  Getting pregnant once is a freebie in my book, shit happens (though barely now that Plan-B is OTC). The second time however is 100% you’re-a-fucking-moron.  The third one on is what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking (oh, you werent).  Birth control is FREE! It just takes a bit of effort (ie: getting off of your ass) to get!   Have they gotten the memo that welfare is not intended for living off of for your entire life?  Did it ever occur to them that if the welfare system suddenly says “Uh, no more money for checks, so sorry!” they are completely and utterly fucked?  Ugh, so retarded and so stupid.

Lets compare 2 irresponsible acts:

• Spending your check on spinning rims instead of job-interview clothes: IRRESPONSIBLE
• Bringing another human-being into this world when you are 100% reliant on the state to wipe your ass currently: REALLY-FUCKING-IRRESPONSIBLE

Usually if you cannot afford something; car, boat, whatever; it gets repo’d.  YOU CANNOT DO THAT WITH A CHILD!  Pregnancy isn’t some magical unknown event that just “happens”.  Its as preventable as avoiding getting your car stolen by LOCKING IT, or avoiding wrecking your car by NOT RUNNING INTO WALLS.  Which means that the only way these career welfare mothers are getting pregnant is out of sheer laziness and stupidity.  Surprise surprise!  Close your legs until you can afford to open them!

My solution, and one offered by other readers on here, is every 3 months, when you get your welfare paperwork reevaluated, you get a shot of Depot Provera.  I don’t give a rats ass about side-effects, these people are already on the downward slide, so we’re doing damage control now.  You want your check, you get your depot shot.  You don’t want your birth control shot? Then I guess you get no check!  The state pays for your life, the state gets to make the rules.  In “real life” if my boss asks me to clean the toilets, then I clean the toilets.  Know why? Because my job pays for my life, so my job gets to make the rules.  I realize that the “job” part is a foreign concept, but just trust me on this one.

I know I’m going to get at least one comment by some idiot saying that “reproduction is a right”.  Well, to them I say “Leave your gated community in your $60k SUV once in a while and open your fucking eyes.  If they have a right to reproduce like fucking rabbits, then I have a right to not pay a fucking dime towards the product of their irresponsibility.”   Seriously! Fuck and reproduce all you want, but don’t come to Uncle Sam asking for a double fist of government cheese.

So, I challenge you all to give me ONE DECENT point that refutes my belief that the woman who is on welfare and gets pregnant yet again is the most irresponsible person on the planet.

For your enjoyment (and since we’re talking about the pinnacle of irresponsibility), here is Octomom in a blender:

UPDATE:

Really good rant on the subject at Violent Acres

According to the scientific trends that every pharmacist sees every day in a retail settings, the future of humanity will possess 3 major characteristics:

1. Ugly
2. Morbidly Obese (I’ll just use the “offensive” term FAT from here on out)
3. Stupid

You see, characteristics #1 and #2 GUARANTEE (as in Billy Mays and the Sham-WOW guy GUARANTEE) that they will copulate with anything.  This is 100% fact, that the fat and ugly  will have sex with ANYTHING that says yes.  This applies to both male and female.   Note that you must be both FAT and UGLY.  I realize that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder, blah blah blah”, but how many butt-ass ugly women come into your store with a hoard of children who tear apart your shelves? Yeah; they put out, that’s how they got those fuck trophies.

Characteristic #3 will GUARANTEE that they will not use any sort of contraception, common sense, or planning.  It also GUARANTEES that they will be on welfare for the rest of their lives.  I realize that I’m painting with a broad brush here (who? me? never!); but how hard is it to get some FREE birth control or FREE condoms and USE THEM.  How hard is it to say no?  Pregnancy isn’t some magical mystical force where we really “aren’t sure” how babies are made, nor is it some knowledge reserved for college people like Krebs Cycle.

Now, due to overly-simplified-and-made-up-genetics, the offspring of 2 fat/ugly/stupid people will have a 75% chance of being fat/ugly/stupid UNLESS their parents have some sort of combo-breaker recessive gene that halts this downward spiral.  Rare chance I know, but when you have a litter of 6 like some of these women do, that gene HAS to surface.  Therefore 1 out of 4 children will grow up to be successful members of society who’s tax dollars are going towards his/her 3 fat/ugly/stupid welfare brethren whom are breeding out of control.

The time is now people.  Swine flu isn’t a pandemic, but the breeding of the fat/ugly/stupid is!

Many of you have emailed me asking why I have been so quiet the past month or so.  Well, now you know.

Welcome to the new Angry Pharmacist site!  Not having threaded comments (meaning you can reply to a comment, and your reply appears under theirs) really bugged me, and Moveable Type just wasn’t cutting the mustard.

So I found n6design and asked them for a new layout for Wordpress.  They went all over town taking pictures of old stock bottles and tablets (I love the Viagra rocket, but the Soma balloon is the best) and even managed to take some pictures of an old Bates Stamping Machine.

The site otherwise should be the same.  Most of the old direct links should work, however I know of a few that are probably broken.  I’ll be adding more things (like twitter, can’t let DrugMonkey and TAestP get one up on me) as soon as I get most of the bugs worked out.

So obviously more than one of you have noticed that I’ve been quite silent lately.  Lawsuit?  Work trouble? Life trouble? Unemployment?  Nevah! Nobody can silence The Angry Pharmacist!

I’m working on a secret surprise for this site.  One that I’m almost completed with.  Its been a few months in the works, but I guarantee it’ll set this site apart from every other ripoff site out there.

I haven’t written a really funny entry about the public in a while, so here is something that has me disgusted, disturbed and really curious:  Why do women with big boobs hide stuff in their bras?

It blows my mind. I go out for a consultation, and I ring them up for their copays.  They stick their arm DOWN THEIR SHIRT, FEEL AROUND THEIR BOOB, THEN PRESENT ME WITH HUMID NASTY BOOB-MONEY.  About mid breast-exam I’m thinking to myself “Oh god, I hope they dont pull their money from there”, and sure enough out comes the wad of dollars (still steaming from sweat) as they proudly hand it to me.  Ew.

I shit you not, they should of just reached down their pants, and pulled it from their crotch. That’s how nasty this money is.  Its in that ‘moist’ (god I hate that word) phase where its neither sopping wet or humid.  Its at the point where you hate to put it in the register because it’ll just moistify all of the other dollars in the stack.

What makes this even better, is that I’ve seen them pull cell phones (sometimes ringing), checkbooks (moist and nasty), pill bottles (labels are all moist and falling off), money, car-keys, etc from their boobs.  Its like their boobs are little pockets of everything.  Whats better is when there are MULTIPLE things down between those mommy-bags so they must rummage around their boobs (not one boob, but both of them) while a store full of people watches in a mixed horror and amazement.  Sometimes Im afraid the’ll put out some food and start eating it, or some dead animal lost forgotten under those fun-bags.

However, what especially drains my soul is that the woman is always large, ugly, loud and sweaty.  Oh no, it can’t be some 150lb 19 year old with size E knockers feeling around inside of her shirt in my presence; it has to be the drenched in sweat, mouth-breathing, fatsomyalgic, 400 lbs with size FFF boobs.

People seem to have no problem with women doing this.  If I stuck my hand down the front of my pants and pulled out money, car-keys, my wallet, and a phone I would be hauled to jail.