Asthma asininity

My husband has asthma. It's a chronic condition. He's had it since he was a child, and he takes two different inhaled daily medications for it. Barring some extraordinary development that has yet to occur, neither his asthma nor the medications he takes for it are going to change.

Nobody in government seems to have figured out that conditions like this exist, though. Both of my husband's medications can only be obtained by prescription. His doctor is usually happy to write a script with several refills on it, but when he runs out, he has to go back to the doctor and get another script. Never mind that nothing has changed since he got the last script. Never mind that asthma inhalers have a pretty low potential for abuse. Never mind that if he wanted to act like a fourteen-year-old and use his inhaler to get high, it would be his right to do so.

Never mind any of that. He needs a prescription when his inhalers run out. Guess what? His inhaler ran out...and because today is a holiday, no one will write him a prescription. He keeps getting voicemail from his primary care doctor, and when he calls anyone else, they tell him, "We're closed, so you should call your primary care doctor," or "Wait until tomorrow." He won't die if he waits until tomorrow, but he'll be pretty damn uncomfortable...for no good reason.

Luckily, I remembered that a drugstore near us has a walk-in clinic whose nurse practitioner can write him a script, so my husband can breathe easier today. But this example is illustrative of how asinine the prescription drug requirement can be. Same for me -- I have to go back to my gynecologist once a year to get his signoff on my birth control pills, even though the way to prevent oneself from having a baby has not changed in any substantial way in the more than ten years since I started taking birth control pills. Why? Because bureaucrats at the FDA won't allow me to purchase them over the counter, and bureaucrats in New York State won't allow my doctor to prescribe me more than a year's supply at a time. (For many drugs, the allowed supply is far lower -- try getting more than a month's worth of Ritalin at a time.)

In all the talk of what dissatisfies Americans about our healthcare system, I never hear the prescription requirement mentioned. But the government telling you that you can't get drugs without a doctor's approval is just as evil as the government taking your money to pay for other people's health care, regulating insurance companies, and all the rest. It's your body -- it's your right to put anything you like into it, and your responsibility to bear the consequences of doing so.