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Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich VS. A Few Pharmacists

What is it about some in the GOP and pharmacists? The last “successful” Republican pharmacist I remember was George Ryan. Read more about what Governor Rod Blagojevich actually requires Illinois pharmacies and pharmacists to do regarding birth control prescriptions. Blagojevich’s rule accommodates one’s conscience and common sense.

Comments 2

  1. cal skinner wrote:

    What about pharmacists State Rep. Ron Stephens and State Senator Frank Watson?

    Posted 26 Aug 2005 at 7:43 pm
  2. Hiram Wurf wrote:

    Hi Cal,

    You’re right to call me on a bad throw-away comment I shouldn’t have made (as well as being right on the narrower point you made – both of these Republican legislators are pharmacists).

    The right point to make here is that if individual pharmacists have a principled stance against a drug that their pharmacy normally distributes, then the right thing for them to do is to protest the pharmacy – not Governor Rod Blagojevich. All the governor did was say that at the pharmacy level you can’t arbitrarily deny patients access to prescription medication that would normally be available at that same pharmacy. If a particular pharmacist doesn’t want to prescribe such a medication, then the pharmacy needs to either get another pharmacist at the location to do so – or in some other way accommodate the patient by getting them the prescription.

    The narrow issue at hand is that certain social conservative pharmacists believe some (or all) types of birth control are immoral – and they want to make Governor Rod Blagojevich the heavy to further their beliefs and partisan interests – even if attacking the governor on the matter at hand is simple wrong. How wrong is it? Before social conservatives take this ‘individual pharmacist veto’ principle and run with it in the name of preserving life, they might want to consider the beliefs of a pro-euthanasia pharmacist who refuses to dispense prescription life-saving medication because they believe it’s just prolonging the suffering. Letting pharmacists second-guess doctors based on their moral beliefs (as opposed to scientific issues like drug interactions) is, to say the least, a dangerous principle – and it goes both ways.

    Posted 26 Aug 2005 at 8:54 pm