How's that for too much bureaucracy? The senate held a hearing on the 30th of November on the issue of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes. "The government must also examine the marketing" of these drugs. Really? It must? That is what the Health and Human Services Inspector General, Daniel Levinson thinks. Is the federal government really going to get into the marketing business? While it may start with regulating the marketing of drug companies, it won't stop there. Soon, the all-mighty federal government will regulate any marketing it doesn't think is for the "common good".
Also, Mr. Levinson said "maybe diagnosis information on the label of a prescription" would be beneficial? Wait a minute, don't doctors prescribe drugs? Don't doctors take some sort of vow to a code of ethics so that they don't diagnose improper drugs? In the very next exchange, the chairman of the committee asked this: "is there any reason, other than our inattention, for patients to be prescribed improperly?" Of course, the "doctor" on the committee ignored the question to push the committee's agenda. Do bureaucrats ever give a straight answer? Nope.
So I'll answer that question for him: no. There is no reason other than inattention, or possibly incompetence, for a doctor to improperly prescribe a drug. Of course, that's much too hard for the government to figure out, and answering that question would eliminate the possibility of more regulation. Unless, of course, they wanted to put a federal agent in every doctor's office to make sure every doctor in the country is paying enough attention so as not to prescribe the wrong drug.
Another member on the panel raised the issue that despite FDA warning labels on the same type of drugs in question, doctors were still prescribing those medications. So, if the doctors are already ignoring warning labels and prescribing improper drugs, surely more warning labels would help right? If there was maybe two warning labels instead of one, surely that would eliminate the chance that a doctor would miss the warning label. That sounds like an issue with bad doctors rather than insufficient regulation to me.
We're going off the cliff at an alarming rate. As Congressman Ron Paul stated in a recent speech in the House, the final nails in the coffin of our republic are being placed. Things are getting scary.
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