Government Medicine in Action
So there’s no confusion, I’ll make my position clear from the beginning: The idea of government-run healthcare is a bad joke. Michael Merritt’s personal saga of his interaction with small-scale government programs is one piece of evidence. The horror stories that all-too-regularly come out of the Veteran’s Administration hospitals are another. But it’s not just the bad healthcare that government agencies give that’s the problem. It’s also about the medicine and the healthcare options that they take away.
A panel of advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has advised that agency to forcibly ban the use of drugs like Vicodin and Percocet that combine acetaminophen and narcotics. The reason for their elimination? Risk of overdose.
It’s noble of the government to regret the 458 people whose deaths were documented as being caused by OD’ing on acetaminophen during the 1990s. It’s unfortunate that sometimes bad things happen to good people when safety rules aren’t followed. Obviously we should, as a society, do a better job of understanding what we put in our bodies. Ideally commonly used pills would be perfectly safe. Failing that, this panel, while divided, seems to think that such life-improving drugs should be verboten.
Frankly that reasoning isn’t worth a damn to a someone with chronic pain, severe migraines, or other source of major discomfort. There is a risk-reward calculation involved any time we ingest a painkiller or other drug. Who should make the determination of whether the relief is worth taking a chance on? No one is better qualified to make the right decision than the person whose life has been disrupted by pain, a panel of detached government bureaucrats least of all.
I predict a huge run on these drugs in coming weeks. Get down to your local drug store ASAP.
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Where has the FDA been all these years? aren’t they supposed to be protecting us not the pharmaceuticals. There is a related post at http://www.iamsoannoyed.com/?p=2017
If high doses of acetaminophen cause liver damage, it only makes sense to reduce the dosage. I would think doctors could easily prescribe the other drugs contained in Vicodin and Percocet separately from acetaminophen.
I keep wishing they’d market a naproxen/hydrocodone combo. Tylenol (acetimenophen) is worthless to me, and Vicodin is what I’m given for back pain. Glad I don’t need it often.
Gosh I’m thankful the Government wants to save me from myself. I mean I almost tipped over a soda machine until I saw the warning sign for risk of death.
Government take action on medicine that’s good and we really thankful to government.
@Interested
Not that I want to challenge your point, but you’d be surprised how many people worldwide manage to damage or kill themselves on those things.
I guess the calculation is how much it costs to place the warnings, then compare that to how much it would cost to have an average citizen incapacitated, crippled or killed by a soda machine injury and how much the probability of such an accident decreases once you outfit the machines with a warning. What can I say, the entropy of the universe increases.
Having been seriously wounded in Vietnam and been partially disabled since 1970 I have had an odyssey with VA hospitals for the last nearly 40 years.
They have been bad. Really bad. Good. Really good. Excellent and So..so. They have been dirty. Clean. Spotless and all stages in between.
The people have been caring. Compassionate. Screw you and Huh? your still here? The prevailing preponderance of evidence seems to point to one over riding conclusion.
That is that the quality of the hospital is directly related to the geographical location of the Hospital in the Country.
I have been to Las Vegas where I was told the wait to get in for help would be 8 MONTHS…EIGHT MONTHS!!! I have been to Salt Lake where the Hospital was clean and exceptionally well run and was seen almost immediately. I’ve been to Denver and the Hospital was over crowded, overworked and dirty. Over the years it has been cleaned up, the people are much more helping, caring and friendly and its not a bad hospital. I have been In Kansas and the hospital is old and tired and the people are great. Ive been in Cheyenne and the people from 200 miles all around go to that hospital because they have perhaps the greatest, caring staff in the world there.
I have been to Jackson, MS. and its a pure nightmare to be seen or helped and the people working seem to speak a different language….sorry couldnt help that lil jab cause they have such a southern accent that to a northener its almost unintelligible. I have been to a couple more that were so so with good staff but bad facilities and bad people with brand new facilities.
But I say all that to say something simple. The government does not run these hospitals. The local people run them and from what I’ve seen the care is directly related to to the location of the hospital.
Government run health care could be great but I can tell you this. If your private health care sucks where you live now?? Government run health care will suck even more and if it is good private health care then most likely the government run health care in that area would do okay too.
In short its American citizens that make a difference. Not the government. The government is not the answer to our problems…..Never has been and never will be.
If you want to make a pointless point, go right ahead. The stickers are obviously there due to a lawsuit. That’s the only cost.
Common Sense is pretty much free