Prescription for Injustice - NYT

[GoneOffShore]

Good op ed in the NYT today -
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01ruderman.html?th&emc=th

Prescription for Injustice
By FLORENCE A. RUDERMAN
Published: September 1, 2005
THE current push by some pharmacists for a right not to fill certain prescriptions awakens memories of 1954, when my father was dying of cancer. I was a graduate student in New York, but I returned to my home in New Haven, Conn., to be with him. As the end drew near, his suffering became intense, the pain harder and harder to control. He was being cared for by an extraordinary doctor: Seymour Lipsky, then chief of hematology at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Dr. Lipsky did not have a private practice, but he had volunteered to take care of my father, telling us to call him whenever we felt we needed him. When we called, he came to the house. <snip>
<snip>
He left a new prescription, for a considerable amount of morphine. Soon after, with my father suddenly in extreme pain, I took the prescription and hurried to the pharmacy.

Dr. Lipsky had been there. The pharmacist seemed to have said nothing to him. But when I appeared, he flew into a rage. I won't have anyone telling me my business! he stormed. This prescription is a fake! It's illegal to stock this much morphine! I haven't been paid in weeks! I won't have anything more to do with this! And he tossed the prescription over the counter onto the floor.

I was stunned. It had not occurred to me that he might simply, suddenly, refuse to fill a prescription. With a searing vision of my father's suffering before my eyes - conscious of what every minute meant - for a moment I felt lost. What should I do? Where could I go? But then I made a quick decision. My best chance, I felt, was with a major pharmacy, with more experience and larger supplies. Taft's Pharmacy, the city's largest, was in the center of town, some distance away. Clutching the prescription I ran downtown.>