4 ms·
I live in a county bigger than Connecticut with zero pharmacies. The clinic has a big medicine pantry, but if they don't have it your next best bet is to drive
by delichon 2y ago
I live in a county bigger than Connecticut with zero pharmacies. The clinic has a big medicine pantry, but if they don't have it your next best bet is to drive to the next state over, about two hours from the clinic. The clinic was staffed by a nurse practitioner only on my last visit. Rural America is not a convenient place to be sick.
- grapesodaaaaa 2y agoSimilar story here. Our insurance likes to mail things, but gets the prescription wrong or it doesn’t show up 60% of the time. We spend a lot of time arguing on the phone.
- FireBeyond 2y agoNot just likes to mail things, they basically try to force you to use the mail pharmacy service that they own. My Aetna policy will deny all prescriptions for anything greater than 30 days supply or multiple refills unless you go through their mail pharmacy - it's the only way to get a 90 day supply. And yup. Their online service often is "unable to determine status" of a prescription that they are filling, which means I can't even order a refill through them.
- notyourwork 2y agoSo let’s vote for the party who isn’t for healthcare for everyone. Obviously business will sort this out and put pharmacies in these places. I cannot help but remain cynical of the world that we’ve inherited.
- rayiner 2y agoPutting pharmacies in all those places when door to door delivery exists would be insanely wasteful. Just make it easier for pharmacists to mail you your medicines.
- notyourwork 2y agoLet’s see how that works out with privatized USPS. Last mile isn’t free.
- rayiner 2y agoYou know what really isn’t free—putting highly educated, well-paid medical professionals in a building serving an extremely low density area.
- selimthegrim 2y agoThose might be the only educated people for people to talk to in that entire extremely low density area
- s1artibartfast 2y agoOr relax the requirements so you don't need a 6-8 years of postsecondary education and a 250k degree to be a glorified cashier. And that is before even getting into the consolidation of the pharmacy/PBM industry. I've spent a lot of time in tiny poor Mexican towns that manage to have a pharmacy, sometimes several. Not only that, but you can get hundreds of prescriptions over the counter that would cost thousand dollar doctors visits in the US. I can only imagine every small town in the US would also have an economically viable pharmacy if the regulatory environment here was the same.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- hollerith 2y agoI heard that the drugs for sale in Mexican pharmacies are often counterfeit or defective in other ways, so I'm not sure how relevant that example is.
- RGamma 2y ago'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
- DecentShoes 2y agoWhich party is that? Both of them?
- notyourwork 2y agoAt the very least one of them tried with the ACA.
- bobthepanda 2y agoACA is also just Romneycare from MA.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- NotAnOtter 2y agoIsn't this like 1/2 the appeal of living in rural America though? Way out there, on your own. Fewer creature comforts, more getting stuff done on your own. No paying the connivence fee associated with cities, having everything nearby but paying double the rent. Yes this sounds like an obscene edge case but it's part of the deal
- rtkwe 2y agoVery few completely eschew the option to get medical services when they decide they need them.
- gruez 2y agoThe point is that being far away from critical services is part of the rural-urban tradeoff. It's like being upset that there isn't a level 1 trauma center within a 30 minute drive, because you live in the middle of nowhere. Nobody is going to deny the importance of living near a level 1 trauma center, but you kinda signed up for it when you decided to live in the middle of nowhere.
- fdsseghy 2y agoEasy there. Just because you can afford a computer, internet, car and rent doesn’t mean everyone can. A common theme of rural America is getting out if you can.
- bobthepanda 2y agoIt costs money to move, and if you don’t have the money I wonder how kind the GP commenter would be to someone fleeing a rural area and living out of their car or a tent in their community.
- femiagbabiaka 2y agoSome people do not decide.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 2y agoI use a mail order pharmacy for most of my needs, and I live in a major metro.