Pharmacy. Jim Plagakis. Pharmacist

Follow up on a subject that won’t go away.

For all of you female PharmDs making money out there and can’t find a man up to your level to marry and have a life with. More dismal statistics.

My advice: Don’t hold out for Mister Perfect. When a guy rings your bell, take him. You can have a very nice life with Mister Good Enough.

The American Association of University Women has recently tried to refute the facts. They said that what has been called “boy troubles” is a myth. Then they say that the disparity in education is in poor and minority children.
The AAUW is wrong on both counts. The only one where they are right is their assertion that the gap is not something caused by feminists.

Women earn 59% of all master’s degrees. 57% of all bachelor’s degrees. Please tell us how pronounced the disparity is in PharmD degrees.

It starts way back, elementary, middle schools. The boys are just not as interested in doing well as the girls are. This slide just keeps on going.

I’ll get back to the issue that young, educated professional women will have to have some attention on the project of finding a mate who is her equal. This is not easy when the men out there want a woman they can dominate.

The bad news goes like this:

Predator download You are sitting in a nice, upscale bar on a Friday night, nursing a champagne cocktail. A good-looking, well-dressed young man has been eying you. You are not real good at this, but you give him a look.

The band is playing dance music, but you hope that he doesn’t ask you to dance. It makes you feel too vulnerable. There, he just made eye contact and raises his beer. You raise your glass timidly. He starts working his way over to you.

After a few minutes of baseball talk. He is a Cubs fan. You don’t tell him that the White Sox are your team. Finally, he lets you know that his is a lawyer. He talks about his job a bit. Then he asks,

“What do you do?”

A lawyer. That is good. “I’m a pharmacist,” you say. “I’m a Doctor of Pharmacy.”

His eyebrows raise. “I didn’t know that pharmacists were doctors.”

You smile. This is very good. An attorney. The last guy you dated was a salesman for Cardinal. “We are doctors,” you say.

He drains his beer and looks around the room uncomfortably. “Well, a doctor.” He smiles. “I gotta go. I gotta go find a stripper.”

• Easy Money

50 years ago, Mercedes Benz decided to build the best automatic transmission possible. They did something simple and logical. Company engineers and designers took apart and studied a transmission from each of the major auto makers. They ended up with what they wanted. The best transmission in the world.

The USA has many fine and alert brains in Congress. You would think that someone would say, “Let’s take apart and study all of the world’s major health care systems and see how they work. Let’s look at how Canada, Spain, France, The UK, Australia, Germany, Holland, Italy, Cuba, Venezuela and China take care of the health needs of their people and not break the bank. Then we could mix and match and come up with the best health solutions for our people.”

“Not so fast,” say the PBMs. “That would leave us out of the picture.”

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The Mercedes model seems simple doesn’t it? Why don’t they do it then? The countries above have successful systems but none of them use the INSURANCE model the way we do. In the pharmacy industry, the PBMs have weaseled their way into the front seat when it comes to splitting up the medical care dollar.

The USA spends $2 Billion annually on health care. That is $7,000.00 per person. The naysayers like to mention Canada. Canada spends less than $4,000.00 per person per year. You would think that for $7,000.00 the independent pharmacy could at least make enough profit per prescription to stay in business.

There is a joker in the deck. The weasels. The PBMs. They are taking up to $2,100.00 per year for every one of our 300 million citizens. Do the math. Go buy some stock.

The PBM is a middle-man. PERIOD! They also are a profit-making industry. PERIOD! They are not in the business of providing health care. PERIOD! The PBMs are in the business of collecting money. PERIOD!

Think about it. The higher costs that we Americans pay and the staggering number of children and adults we leave uncovered all translate to bloated profits for an industry that does nothing at all to deliver health care. The insurance companies have a really sweet deal. We pay up to 30% of our health care dollars to insurance companies who merely take the money in, remove a large chunk for themselves, and then dribble out the rest, often not without a fight.

You know the drill. In our industry, it is slow pay, low pay & no pay. People with legitimate illness are excluded. Mothers die of breast cancer because of a prior condition clause in the policy. Fill in the blanks. You, in the pharmacy business, can come up with at least one instance of an insurance company leaving someone who has paid the premiums dangling in the wind. It is disgraceful.

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Again, think about it. Why in hell are we giving 30 cents of every health care dollar to an industry that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING toward providing healthcare? It seems as if their main focus is in cheating recipients and providers. Insurance companies employees are trained to say, “No. That is not covered by your policy.”

Pharmacy needs to take a fine focus at the PBMs. Pharmacy needs to stop whining and start doing something. A good place to start is your congressperson and urge him/her to support pharmacy friendly legislation. You can start with this one:

• Sunshine Cleaning movie full

I am pleased to let you know that I am cosponsoring HR 971, the Community Pharmacy Fairness Act. Again, thank you for contacting my office and for your support of our shared position.
Sincerely, Ron Paul

Does this sound right?

Men who are successful in their careers tend to marry women who are lower on the professional and educational food chain than they are. They still, even in the 21st century, seek out women over whom they can exert control. The stereotypical “Stepford Wives” of the 1970s still live.

These days, ambitious, talented women are staying single in droves. Are they just too busy? Too discriminating? Or just too scary. “Stepford Wives”, they are not. Can you see a predicament? It looks like successful women may be in a pickle.

Successful women (Read here, modern young female pharmacists) DO NOT look for men who are lower on the food chain. They think that they have a right to expect their potential partners to be at least as successful as they are, and to have just as much to offer as they do. For the majority of young professional women, this is uncharted territory. They are the pioneers and breaking new ground is never easy.

Where do they find these successful, equal men? Use pharmacy school as an example. Women are the majority. In 2007, 61% of master’s degrees went to women. Men who are your equals are going to be harder and harder to find. With not enough successful men around, successful women are choosing to stay single.

So, you are not one of those women. It is okay with you to be the educated, successful one in the family. The problem is that the potential partners who are not intimidated by a strong, successful women is a short list. I knew a pediatrician who was married to a blacksmith. The problem is that there just aren’t that many confident, self-assured blacksmiths out there. It was perfectly okay with this guy that the pediatrician made more money that he did. His secret ego booster was his master’s degree. Except for the money, they felt like equals.

How many of you women have heard or said this? “There are no good men left. They are all married or gay.” Or something as equally lamentable. I would say that the female Pharm D, who is making the kind of money that is to be made, is at the top of her game. She is on professional cruise control and I don’t care how enlightened the men claim to be, they are intimidated.

She is better paid, better educated, probably better traveled and socially savvy. Men are going to run from this woman. They still tend to want “Stepford wives”, remember?

It is not that men still can’t see that women can be equally capable professionally, they just have a hard time visualizing their role in a relationship when the women outrank them on all the measures they use to measure their own success. It is gloomy for the men. It is worse for the “power chicks” (this is you!). It makes it very hard for them to find the partner they want. One who is professionally equal.

Successful men tend to want women who are a step down. Remember? Doctors/Nurses for example. So, where does this leave many young, successful female pharmacists? Single or with gold-diggers. They are out there. Men with marginal skills who are looking for the money. I have had an association with a female pharmacy owner whose husband is the quintessential male gold-digger. His life includes a Harley-Davidson, a $70,000.00 Mercedes, a health club, regular manicures & pedicures, capped teeth, diamonds in his ear lobes and more. He does not work. He gets a regular pay check.

In the end, common values and goals, generosity, intelligence, respect, a sense of humor and, of course, that animal attraction can win the day. (Notice that attraction is the last on the list) The pediatrician and the blacksmith are gorgeously happy. You just have to be careful out there. The gold-digger is the joker in the deck.

So, what’s a power chick to do? Take a deep breath. Then, get used to it. You are a POWER CHICK even though you have not had to claw your way up a corporate ladder. Review your expectations and that does not mean lower them. You just may not be looking in the right places. Just be careful of the sleaze-balls with capped teeth and a good line.

From now on, The Medical College of Ohio and The University of Toledo, College of Pharmacy are going to share the same building. The medical students and the pharmacy students will see each other in the hallways. They will share lecture rooms. They will hang out around the same coffee machines and the ones who got a monkey on their backs as teenagers will go to the parking lot to smoke their cigarettes.

I’d guess that students who work together would find a place to unwind together over one, two, three or four beers after classes on Fridays. Don’t say this out loud, but they would probably talk about what stimulants were best for finals. Medical students will seek out help for their pharmacology exams. Do the pharmacists need help from the doctors?

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The Attic dvdrip Both of them will get wined and dined by Big Pharma. Big old plates of steak and lobster for growing 20 somethings. Probably a waste of Big Pharma’s money, but they don’t know that. Students are idealistic. They have no problem accepting martinis and a good meal at a four star spot in Ottawa Hills and then talking generic equivalents on the way home.

( It is those physicians from an earlier time who need their egos stroked and are more liable to fall in line with Big Pharma.)

Medical students will be dating pharmacy students in Toledo, Ohio. Some will live together and some will get married. The line between doctor and pharmacist is going to get pretty blurry. This is a good thing, huh? It will lead to better patient care and AT A LOWER FEE bottom line, after all are paid, fee.

These kids are also going to share their educations and they are going to come together with their degrees as partners. How about that? Modern doctors looking at the Pharm D. as their equals? Is that possible?

Supplemental prescribing by the Pharm D. will be accepted by the modern physician. Point-of-care testing and dose adjustment by the pharmacist will be .. ho hum .. no big deal.

Modern Pharm Ds are very capable of making safe, effective therapeutic interventions on behalf of their patients without a physician being involved.

The best result, I see, is a very real door opening to a whole new level of independent pharmacy. Wouldn’t that be something? Think about it!