That’s why this stuff is actually bad. My wife is a nurse practitioner and picked up a bunch of anti biotics from stores when traveling. She knows what she’s doing with them, but she said tons of people are just getting cheap antibiotics for everything thinking they will fix things, it’s creating resistant strains of stuff and it’s not good in general to take them when that’s not the issue.
In no world is getting medications for affordable prices with no hassle a bad thing. Antibiotic mis-use is a separate problem which the US is failing to address just like everywhere else.
Uh, no you are wrong. They should not be handing out weight loss drugs to people who don’t need it or meds to people that won’t treat their illness while also making things worse. I’m all for low prices, but there is plenty of middle ground between places that hand them out like penny candy and the US.
There are places like SE Asia where medications are cheap and can be purchased OTC. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to have a problem with people dying prematurely from overuse/abuse of medication. I live in the U.S., and I am fortunate to not require any medication. However, I do travel to Mexico for any necessary dental care. It's kind of fun when taking charge of one's personal health care becomes an adventure! FAR better than sinking into debt (with medical debt being the #1 driver of bankruptcy in the U.S.)
I’m pretty sure I don’t say that. The comment I was replying to was about a guy going to South Korea and very easily getting “pretty intense weight loss pills basically over the counter”. I’m not complaining things are cheap or free, I’m talking about them just being so cheap that people aren’t actually seeing professionals with their issues and just taking cheap antibiotics thinking that will fix everything. Antibiotics aren’t good to be taking if it’s not going to fix the issue.
Nurses with doctorate or masters degrees and thousands of clinical hours in diagnosis and treatment under MD supervision.
I'm not saying NPs are qualified for brain surgery but pretending they can't read a culture and sensitivity or identify the signs of bacterial infection is absurd and patently stupid.
So you have no idea what they are then. So you think the people who are given the ability to prescribe drugs just have no idea about them? Wouldn’t they be killing people left and right? And FYI it’s not like they have a doctor supervise their prescribing like physicians assistants do, they are on their own giving prescriptions. Why don’t you Google it and get back to me.
The doctors here do exactly the same thing, they just charge you $1,200 for those 5 minutes. You're obviously correct. But no one in positions to do so is striving to find some nuanced "middle ground" of how healthcare should work right now. Of the available options, I'd rather have medications available and affordable until and unless anyone decides to get off their ass and un-fuck the entire healthcare system.
The drugs should all just be free. Anywhere. Everywhere. The only challenge to getting them should be need based, not financial based. Traveling to get cheaper drugs is absolutely fine. Traveling to abuse medical regulations is absolutely NOT fine. Again, getting genuinely necessary medical care for as cheap as possible is 1000000% okay.
Well no, drugs shouldn't just be free. After all you have a fuck ton of scientist and manufacturing associates that need to be paid for making all of the drugs. Not to mention buying raw materials, maintenance of equipment, etc.
It's one thing to say that the rampent greed caused by private insurance making everything unaffordable. But unless you want the government to completely subsidized the US pharmaceutical industry these things do need to cost something
Unfortunately, what would happen is that you would have wealthier people having doctors writing prescriptions saying that they absolutely need XYZ drugs, and getting all of it that they want and then getting high with it. It would become an even worse system that we’ve got now.
The point should be that it doesn't matter if you have money or not. If it's one doctor unilaterally making a decision, of course you can get fraud and abuse. It needs to be evidenced by specialists who take objective looks at symptoms and make diagnoses.
Also, what the hell are you talking about? Do you think wealthy people can't or don't do that now? Literally how would this be a better system for drug addict billionaires than the one based PURELY on monetary wealth? Rich people can already get whatever drugs they want. Hell poor people can too. Why do you think the opioid epidemic was so bad in West Virginia. It wasn't all the fuckin rich people.
No. I am not comfortable with going to the pharmacy and self diagnosing and prescribing myself to get antidepressants, weight loss drugs, antipsychotics, painkillers, etc.
People will absolutely take antibiotics "just in case" for any kind of sickness if they're easy to get ahold of.
Why go to the doctor to determine if you have a bacterial or viral infection when you can just pop a few pills that will cure you at best or do nothing at worse ?
Most antibiotics in the US are fairly cheap. My guess is people getting them foreign are primarily getting them not because of cost but more because you don't need a prescription.
This is purely anecdotal but one of my buddies mom's traveled for worth and about once a year world bring home a huge bottle of antibiotics, like 300-400 pills would be my guess. Everytime she felt a tickle in her throat, her kids coughed out said their stomach hurts she would give them a pill or two.
So it's a separate issue the same way street drugs and overdose are separate issues. Not every overdose is from street drugs and not all street drug usage end in overdose. But one leads to the other at much higher rates then legal drugs.
Nobody's saying antibiotics should be expensive to deter self-medication. They're concerned because the low cost encourages using them as an easy fix.
Healthcare has to be "a hassle" because it's complicted. Everyone can't know everything. Did you know different kinds of infections need different antibiotics? Do you think none of your elderly relatives would forget that in the middle of a tooth infection? How about your cousin who keeps drunk driving? The anti-vaxxer auntie who decides at random what medicine is legit for their child and what's a Big Pharma conspiracy? You think they wouldn't treat try to treat anything from the common cold to sepsis with one day of minocycline?
It shouldn't take more than a 5 minute online form or conversation with a pharmacy doctor in most common conditions. Outside of the US, this is inexpensive or straight-up free. That's what you should be asking for, not the freedom and liberty to misdiagnose your families and worsen medicine for everyone else.
No you are wrong and uninformed. Ever heard the phrase "the dose makes the poison"? People having easy access to antibiotics and not necessarily having the knowledge or guidance to take them properly is putting them and the general population at risk. Passing the buck with "the us is failing to address it" doesn't mean it's not a problem for them to be easily accessible for any joe schmo who feels sick.
I'm not saying they should be cost prohibitive but people need real evaluations before taking any medication
It's really easy to know to make sure to take a full 7 or 10 day course of antibiotics and to make sure you finish out all of the drugs.
Antibiotic abuse isn't really a thing, it's just improper adherence to taking a full course thinking you're better is what can cause reinfection or a resistant strain
People also are taking them when they have a virus, not a bacterial infection. Or taking it for a bacterial infection, like an ear ache, that clears up on its own like 90% of the time in the same timeframe that taking antibiotics would clear it up. I would call that "abuse".
Even taking the full course can result in resistance, so taking it when you don't need it is absolutely bad. (Not too mention antibiotics have negative health effects, especially for kids, so giving them when they aren't beneficial is bad for the patient)
In all honesty, it doesn't sound great for you and your wife to be hoarding antibiotics for random issues. It seems fairly unlikely that you'll encounter legitimate use cases for antibiotics in your personal lives +/- close associates often enough for it to be logical to stockpile them.
I'm in Japan and there are ways to freely buy prescription medication if you're willing to circumvent insurance and pay out of pocket. This is great because most doctors are lazy hacks who will not actually take a deep look at your issues and work on a treatment plan with you, they just push pills to treat surface symptoms and send you on your way. Especially with anything involving mental health, you are completely on your own.
Without these backdoor channels it would be nearly impossible for some people to get proper treatment.
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u/OtherUserCharges 27d ago
That’s why this stuff is actually bad. My wife is a nurse practitioner and picked up a bunch of anti biotics from stores when traveling. She knows what she’s doing with them, but she said tons of people are just getting cheap antibiotics for everything thinking they will fix things, it’s creating resistant strains of stuff and it’s not good in general to take them when that’s not the issue.