Question for Americans..........

[Strelnikov]

Quoting red indian:

"Try 48 hours or longer over here for a repeat prescription!!!! and normally it is NOT ready, and we have to go through the usual pantomime of them trying to prove to me that I did NOT bring in the prescription on monday and that it is now thursday and they STILL do not have it ready!!!"

The mom-n-pop place I described seldom takes more than 15 minutes to fill a prescription, and I can have a coke or a coffee at the soda fountain while I'm waiting. Or I can call an hour or so ahead, and the medication will be ready for pickup when I walk in the door. They even deliver within a 3-mile radius, which was handy when I bunged up my back and couldn't drive. There's a lot to be said for free enterprise.

Strelnikov

 

[sushi854]

Free enterprise is a good idea, but in the case of US health care, it seems that private insurance through a large, powerful corporation is becoming as much of an evil as a socialized system. Mom-n-pop style drugstores are struggling to survive in a world where forced mail order and low reimbursement rates from insurance companies combined with the astronomical price of prescription drugs severly cuts into profits. Next time you pick up the $100 prescription from your pharmacy, remember that the pharmacy's profit margin is roughly 2-3%. If the current Republican medicare plan, things are only going to get worse, as more forced mail order is a cornerstone of the plan. So much for free enterprise...

 

[red indian]

Just to clarify..........

Our chemists are just as quick as those in the states, the problem is getting the bloody prescription out of the doctor!!