I could not get to sleep last night, again. I ended up getting to sleep perhaps an hour before Mrs. Fungus got up. Today, however--unlike yesterday--I lacked the fortitude to get up anyway.
This is my weekend. I need to get some sleep, damn it.
Yesterday I ended up making two trips to the pharmacy for Mrs. Fungus--two, because I forgot my cell phone and one of the prescriptions was quite unexpectedly $90. I refused the RX, thinking I'd come back if it were necessary, but I wanted to check around to see if anyone had it cheaper, anyway. A phone call could have saved me the second trip, but "forgot my phone", so, yeah. And it turned out this is something no one has for cheap. Argh etc.
Doctors. You know, if there's an expensive drug to treat a common condition, and a cheap one, they will inevitably prescribe the most expensive one possible. Okay: I can see prescribing an expensive antibiotic for a persistent infection which cheaper ones has not alleviated, and I can see prescribing an expensive medication when no cheaper one is available.
But when there's an even choice between a $4 scrip and a $90 one--when there's no reason not to prescribe the cheap one--why do they ALWAYS prescribe the expensive one?
I'd like to think that highly trained medical professionals aren't thinking something like, "WTF, I make $90 in about twenty minutes on a slow day; it's not like that's real money or anything. I spend more than that when I go golfing!"
Karl Denninger is spot-on when he says that the medical industry should be subject to the same anti-monopoly laws that everyone else has to follow, and that people ought to be able to comparison shop.
As for me, standard operating procedure is for me to ask a doctor, "What does the medication cost?" before I accept the RX. Except in cases where I already have some idea, of course. For example, when I get an RX for amoxicillin, I don't ask, because I know the stuff's dirt cheap. Any time the doc prescribes something I don't know about, I ask. Usually they can give me some idea. (Also, my regular doctor is conscientious about spending his patients' money for them, which helps.) Give me a valid reason for using the more expensive medication and I will; I don't think it's too much to expect a doctor to be able to tell me why the cheap drug is less desirable than the expensive one. When it comes down to a 10:1 ratio in price, it should certainly be a more valid reason than his own personal preference.
My doubled trip to the pharmacy kept me out of the house until 11:30, and the entire rest of my evening was goofed up as a result. After I tucked Mrs. Fungus in I watched some more YouTube videos about old engines, and after attending to some housekeeping in WoW (total on-time, 15 minutes) I was going to watch a couple eps of Haganai Next, but instead ended up fapping around on Google and YouTube, and suddenly it was nearly 4. Hit the hay, tossed and turned for quite a while, and...yeah, didn't sleep all that well.
*sigh*
Right now I need to go make meatloaf. Wheee!