Reaching Into The Mailbag And Feeling The Love.

Got this one awhile back in response to my post mocking the New York Times "Pharmacists aren't just dispensers anymore!!" story. Yes I know it's been awhile. Like I've told you before, free writing takes a back seat to that which people pay me to do:

It's one thing to have an intelligent opinion about the current status or future of the profession, but it is a whole different issue when you let your self-pity and depression manifest itself as absolutely awful blog posts. While your lamentations about APhA not representing you or other apathetic "average" pharmacists are sometimes amusing, they are mostly sad. Sad in that you do not have the backbone to take your condescending, self-aggrandizing ass out of the store and accompanying 6 figure income and start something where you don't need to cry about how you need a union in order to get specialized treatment. You fail to see how the profession needs to change in order to remain a profitable one in the future and even worse, you dump on those who are actually trying to search for different revenue streams. Whether you think MTM is actually practiced or not in your tiny little hole of the world, that doesn't matter. You are a tiny person, and tiny people try to bring other people down with them. You may retire with your income intact, but the rest of us need to figure how we are going to make a living long term. The last thing we need is an old, conservative curmudgeon such as yourself trying to beat back potentially viable ideas while you collect your apathetic $100,000+. You may not need to worry about competing for your job now, but I would recommend starting to pack your capitalism-hating smugness for Venezuela, Cuba, or another country in which they have they love the free market. In short, go f*** yourself, throw away your scotch for a month or two, and actually do something other than whine and collect a paycheck.

Not bad.....you know my favorite part about this hate mail? He manages to call me "conservative." I'm pretty sure this is the first time in my life I've ever had that epithet hurled my way, and the fact the letter writer expects the word to be taken as an insult warms my heart a little.

The main problem with the letter though is how formulaic it is. Substitute "OBRA" for "MTM" and it could have been written in 1991, which was kinda the point of the post that set this guy off. For those of you playing along at home, OBRA was the law that mandated pharmacists offer to counsel patients with each new prescription, and it was the darling project of the APhA nerds 20 years ago. It would be the savior of pharmacy they assured us, redefining the profession for the benefit of us all.

A generation later, thanks to OBRA, there is now most likely some sort of checkbox you tic off when you pick up a prescription saying you didn't want to talk to the pharmacist. A redefinition indeed.

A generation later, filling a prescription has been redefined to mean "pressing your finger against a biometric device and quickly glancing at the label"

A generation ago, I had far more time to talk to my customers than I ever do today. That's what your ilk has done for the profession my young friend. Excuse me if I'm a little less than grateful. Excuse me for not buying your bullshit again.

But wait, someone says:

"Our main concern is that we try to make sure there is a sufficiently trained staff in the pharmacy so that a pharmacist can do his/her job professionally and completely, including the counseling of all patients."

Think that quote came from the American Pharmacists Association? You're on crack. It came from the United Steelworkers. Twenty years after APhA's great brainstorm it's a union that is trying to clean up the mess you made.

Oh, and as far as survival in the real world? Can you do me a favor? Since I'm so tiny and can't see beyond my tiny little horizon? Can you take a look at the independent drug stores left in your town, and find out how many of them have saved their business using MTM, compared to how many of them have saved their business by going into custom compounding? When you write me back I want you to put those numbers in the first sentence.

Custom compounding, I will remind you, involves buying things and selling them for more than you paid for them. Quite the revolutionary business model. If the independent pharmacists of this country had listened to you fucks 20 years ago, today they would all be working for CVS. So my friend, if you want to keep those paychecks you are so concerned about coming, you better hang onto that APhA staff job of yours like a tick on a dog, or start redirecting your bullshit skills towards convincing the MILF's your bioidentical estrogens are worth a weeks pay.

Otherwise maybe I'll see you in Cuba...where I bet we'll both have time to be fully OBRA compliant.