Affordable Pharmacies Reference
Not much of a day goes by when our e-mail inboxes don't fill with advertisements for prescription medications. Many of these emails promise to deliver drugs of all classes by overnight courier with no prescription. While you will find legitimate online pharmacies, and also the practice of telemedicine or cyber-medicine is gaining acceptance, this change within the way medicine will be practiced is rocking the foundations of the medical establishment. Having the capacity to consult the physician online, and obtain prescription drugs delivered to your doorstep by UPS has broad social and legal implications. The net makes it possible for making drugs available to people that might not be able to afford to pay US prices, are embarrassed to determine a health care professional face-to-face, or are susceptible to pain, the treatment of which puts most doctors in direct conflict with the 'war on drugs' but alternatively there will be the question whether these pharmacies make drugs available to recreational drug users without the oversight of a licensed medical practitioner.
Medical care in the US has reached a point where it is expensive and impersonal which has caused the consumer to become generally unsatisfied with the medical establishment as a whole. Examples include the huge differences between the cost of drugs in the US and Canada, long wait times in US pharmacies, and poor service in general. Perhaps realizing this, US customs appears to tolerate the millions of Americans that visit Canada on a yearly basis to buy their medications, as for the most part, these 'drug buyers' are elderly American's that cannot afford the high cost of filling their prescriptions in the US.
Rather than to travel to Canada or Mexico millions of Americans are now turning to the net for both their medical needs. Telemedicine (or cyber medicine) provides consumers with the capability to both consult with a doctor online and order drugs over the web at discounted prices. This has resulted in consumers turning to online pharmacies for their medical needs, as well as in particular pharmacies with a relationships with a doctor, which permit the consumer to completely bypass the traditional brick and mortar pharmacies, with the added benefit of having their physician act as an intermediary between the consumer and also the pharmacy. Based on Johnson (2005) this is as a result of consumers becoming very dissatisfied with regards to managing both local pharmacies and health care professionals. As Johnson, notes, "Consumers will be more more likely to know the name of their hairdresser than their pharmacist." When Johnson (2005) rated the many professions in the heath care treatment system, he found that pharmacists had the minimum interaction with their patients than did every other group. Today, resulting from this "consumers are buying 25.5 percent of their prescriptions online, opposed to 13.5% of that are picked up at a brick and mortar pharmacy" (Johnson 2005).
What has brought so much focus on online pharmacies is the fact that it is possible to get just about any drug with no prescription online. Many of these prescriptions are for legitimate purposes purchased through an online pharmacy since the buyer is too embarrassed to visit the physician or for other reasons such as the unavailability of FDA approved drugs to the consumer. These drugs may include steroids that due to their misuse and being classed as a classed a category three drugs, are seldom prescribed by physicians. These drugs have a useful purpose to those experiencing any wasting disease for example AIDS, they also play a role in ant-aging (FDA, 2004).
Today a visit to a doctor is normally brief, much of the triage it really is produced by a nurse or perhaps a nurse practitioner with the physician only dropping in for a few minutes, if at all. In several cases the patient is seen by a nurse practitioner. One of the arguments against telemedicine as well as a better term is cyber-medicine, is the fact that the physician does not have a physical relationship with the patients and thus is in no position to make a diagnosis, and thus can not legally prescribe drugs.
Ironically when one compares the work up that one must undergo to consult with the online physicians and compares this to a face-to-face visit with a local doctor, one finds that the online medicines physician, in many cases, has a far better understanding of the patient's medical problem than does the physician who meets face to face with the person. In many cases before an on-line a health care professional prescribes any sort of medication they insist on a full blood workup they may also require that one has additional tests performed, for example.
