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Debate Continues Over Florida Pill Abuse
March 8, 2011
Speaker Dean Cannon said Monday that the House approach to fighting pain pill abuse won’t include a database to track prescription drugs, but instead will call for a ban on doctors selling drugs from their offices.
Calling for a repeal of a prescription drug tracking database, which was put into law last year but isn’t up and running yet, sets up a fight with the Senate where the president restated Monday his backing of the database.
Cannon said he has come to believe that the problem of prescription drug abuse needs to be thwarted farther up the chain – and that the House bill will instead outlaw the dispensing of prescription drugs in doctors’ offices as a way of fighting what many say is an epidemic of fraudulent script writing. Doing so, Cannon said, would “stop drug dealers who are masquerading as doctors.”
“Banning doctor-dealers is the only way to do it,” said Cannon, R-Winter Park, while speaking with reporters the day before the opening of the legislative session.
Cannon’s counterpart on the other side of the Capitol, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, meanwhile, said he will continue to push for the prescription drug database. The database, aimed at flagging people who get large amounts of prescription drugs by “doctor shopping,” has been tied down in a fight over the contract to run it.
Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, restated his belief that the problem of painkiller abuse is too urgent to abandon the database
“I don’t think we’re going to be moving in the opposite direction (from last year’s bill) in the Senate,” Haridopolos said Monday.
In addition to Cannon and other top members in the House who oppose the database, Haridopolos will also be up against Gov. Rick Scott, who has urged lawmakers to repeal the law requiring it.
The state’s medical establishment, meanwhile, doesn’t want doctors to lose the right to dispense drugs, and supports the database.
“Dispensing physicians play an important role in the health care system,” Florida Medical Association General Counsel Jeff Scott said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the speaker to ensure that this important aspect of patient care continues, and that legitimate patients and physicians are not hurt by those who take advantage of the system.
“We believe the focus should be on the enforcement of the laws that were put on the books in the last two sessions, rather than punishing honest physicians who provide a valuable service for their patients,” Scott said.
The House proposal (PCB HHSC 11-03) would ban the dispensing of most controlled substances by physicians, and ban distributors from selling them to doctors. It would also allow the Department of Health to quarantine drug supplies for doctors until they’re disposed of, and calls for additional spending on law enforcement to enforce the ban.
The repeal of the database is contained in a separate proposed committee bill (PCB HHSC 11-04.)
Cannon said he knew some doctors would oppose his plan.
But, he said, “this plan isn’t about hurting doctors, it is about addressing the situation as a whole, and putting principle over profit to cut off the supply at the distribution point.”
By David Royse
The News Service Florida
Comments
7 Responses to “Debate Continues Over Florida Pill Abuse”
All this will do is make it more expensive for the uninsured and drive the cost of malpractice insurance WAY UP. If your doc feels like there being watched like a hawk there going to make you see them every month instead of every other month. This way they can cover there rear a little more. Your doc will be more hesitant to write a refill on things like celebrex, lirica, talison. Simple everyday scripts that really don’t need to be monitored monthly. Micromanagement never works out for the best. Most people that are doing Loratab, Xnax, oxy, are getting it from someone selling there grandmother’s script. You cant stop that by following the doc around.It just like the phudodeprin being put behind the counter, it’s not stoping meth from being made.
It seems to me that a much simpler answer would be effective. A pharmacy database to track our prescriptions FILLED, along with doctors only being allowed to WRITE prescriptions and a little attention to detail by pharmacists should at least minimize the “shopping” issue. If a new prescription is written, require the remainder of the old prescription to be returned before filling the new one. Or, how about software-based prescription-writing? The doctor orders the prescription directly from the pharmacy and the pharmacy notifies the doctor that this person just got a prescription for 120 lortabs! Then the person is flagged by both the doctor AND the pharmacy database!
i think both laws should be in effect. The doctors that dispense narcotics out of their office will just write multiple scripts to the addicts they already supply. that way the patient can not “doctor shop.”
Here in Tn when somebody checks into the emergency room a print out is generated with all their meds they have gotten filled. If someone is on Tenncare (state aid) they can and will lose their benefits if they are proven to be doctor shopping for narcotics.
Even with all this people will find some way to get their drugs. Prescription drug abuse is a bigger problem then illicit drugs. Those addicts just have a way to pay for the drugs (insurance) rather then robbing and stealing.
Sorry that wasn’t suposed to say “issued”
It was suppose to say we have so many “issues”. As in health issues.
Lets face it, this is just another law that will be expensive to enforce,
and we are out of money in america. It also will not work!
Just another stupid idea by stupid IDEA MEN.
This is stupid as far as I’m concerned. This is like saying no one can drive
because some people are DUI drivers. Who is going to write prescriptions?
Or are they all allowed to write prescriptions just not have shots and drugs at
their offices?
I have a very good doctor and we talk about about ALL our MY drugs and MY
husbands drugs. We have so many issued it’s sometimes hard to manage.
Even tho we eat right and do everything we can some of it is in our genes and
very hard to fight. What are people supposed to do? Is this all drugs like
my heart meds. and my husbands diabetes meds, or just pain pills?
It doesn’t matter who give us meds, people will find a way to abuse them
selves, look at alcohol and paint. Who are we kidding with this. Who
would have thought that sudefed would ever be a problem?
where there’s a will there’ s a way to get drugs