SOSMARYOSEP! It happened again! Just last Monday several patients, once again, trekked back to my clinic telling me that they went around all the Drugstores in the ‘Centro’ and were told that the meds that I prescribed were NOT AVAILABLE! I laboriously wrote just the Generic COMPOSITIONS of these drugs believing that doing so would help my suffering patients get the best value for their MEAGER budgets, but still those bullheaded pharmacy clerks, who, perhaps, have not yet been trained how to read and classify drugs according to their Generic Compositions, simply dismissed my POOR patients, just like those Manila Taxi Drivers who simply SNOB shabbily dressed fare who they think just cannot give them the BIG TIPS which others can afford! It really seems like these Drugstore OWNERS also have to be reprimanded in black and white by the Regional Health Office, and required to train their clerks in the rudiments of the Generics Act and the compositions of all the meds in their Pharmacy just as WE physicians have to be reprimanded for not including the Generic Compositions of the meds which we prescribe! IF the Generic Compositions of the meds that we prescribe are NOT RESPECTED or given a second look by these stupid clerks, since they have been used to deal only in dispensing BRANDED meds, then let’s cut all the bullshit and DO AWAY WITH WRITING ALL THESE TIME CONSUMING AND HARD TO REMEMBER GENERIC COMPOSTIONS OF MEDS, and just get back to writing the BRAND NAMES of these meds instead!

        As a weak compromise, allowing the Doctors to write BOTH the Brand names and the Generic Compositions of all the meds that they prescribe will STILL be wasting a lot of time, and putting some NEEDLESS strain on the Doctors. Including the Brand names in the prescription will just be JUSTIFYING those Pharmacy clerks who have long been used to just giving the BRANDED but relatively MORE EXPENSIVE meds to their customers! Of course it would be quite normal to expect them to want to dispose of their more expensive BRANDED meds FIRST, rather than get stuck with them till they expired! The Return on Investments of course has to be given priority ON TOP of the Government’s Generics Act!

        It really has to be either JUST THE BRAND NAMES or JUST THE GENERIC COMPOSITIONS OF DRUGS! How can our poor patients benefit from the MAIN OBJECTIVE of the Generics Act if the ‘wise’ and ‘wily’ Drugstore Clerks will just simply give the EXPENSIVE meds whose BRAND is also written beside their Generic compositions? Come on! Give me a break! We cannot expect our patients to ride the faster and more efficient Airplane with their tight Philtranco Budgets!

        Of course, if you will ask me, I am for just retaining the easier to write and remember BRAND NAMES. But then it’s not really me, or the Doctors, who we should be talking about but our dear PATIENTS, the Main Reason why we endured all those ‘vicissitudes’ and countless sleepless nights in Medical School, in the very first place!

        It is them, NOT US, and not even the Multinational Drug Corporations who we should be talking about! Of course, we want to get them well, as fast AS POSSIBLE. But if they can barely AFFORD the really new and fantastic BRANDED meds that we want to give them, must we then still FORCE them to sell their carabaos, pigs, and maybe even nipa huts, just so that what we want will still be followed? Are we then the proud ‘LITTLE GODS’ who I used to fear then when I was still a child? The ‘gods in white’ who swaggered along the Hospital hallways and held sway on People’s lives, and whose booming voices penetrated the very marrow of our bones and made us tremble at the very sight of their noses ‘held high’?! OR are we just God’s humble ASSISTANTS who were given the rare privilege to be able to treat the sick and alleviate pain and suffering in the easiest and most affordable terms possible?

        It really is not about Iloilo Rep. Fergenel Biron and his alleged Generics Corporation which, nevertheless, he also had a right to establish in order to provide the POOR MAJORITY with a more affordable ALTERNATIVE in a field where these Multinational Drug Companies have been enjoying a MONOPOLY ever since I can remember! It’s not about the Department of Health who allegedly submitted the position paper regarding the insertion of the GENERICS ONLY provision. It’s not even about Congressman Dato Arroyo and his Mother’s sincere desire to bring down the prices of medicines, to the unfortunate detriment of these long established Multinationals. It simply is about the AFFORDABILITY of the meds that the suffering Majority needs in order to even BARELY SURVIVE! If most of our poor patients have long been able to survive just by visiting those esoteric ‘herbolarios’ and Faith Healers, without the benefit of any of our modern day medicines, then I guess a relatively ‘less effective’ but affordable remedy like our Generic Meds will definitely be a lot better than no meds at all! Besides, let’s not get into all that crap about EFFICACY or whatever -- it will always boil down to the availability of the MEANS to buy these meds that will always be the ‘bone’ in our patients’ throats. In other words, it really is all about the MONEY, ‘tupid!

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        “Men occasionally stumble over the Truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened”

-- WINSTON CHURCHILL