Has anyone ever had a pharmacist refuse to fill a prescription for them?

Take your script to another pharmacist and notify your doctor. he has the means to file a complaint, if its warranted. this does not apply to Scheduled Drugs.

Has never happened to me. It will be interesting to see if it has ever happened to anyone.

It’s never happened to me, either. But then again, I live in a fairly progressive area.

Yeah, when I took the pill I was in military care and then afterwards living in SE Florida, so it is unlikely in either scenerio to hit a pharmacist who would not fill that script. I never needed RU 486 or something similar. I do however have a friend, who has a sister, and the sister is very upset her husband precribes the pill for his teenage patients. She thinks he should refuse because it is against their belief system. Luckily he ignores her.

Hurray for the doctor who respects his patients’ beliefs!

I have heard about some local pharmacists in my area who have refused to sell the “Morning after Pill” on religious grounds. Playing God and judging others is not within their scope. They should be reported to the Board immediately and hopefully have their licenses removed. Then they should find a nice theocracy like Iran in which to live and practice.

Agree with you, @Espiritus_Corvus. Where do you live?

The Tampa Bay area..

@Espiritus_Corvus, as ridiculously retarded as it is, many states have laws that allow the pharmacist to refuse to fill a script for any reason. I’m not sure if florida is one of those states but I wouldn’t doubt it. It’s not right, but reporting them probably won’t do anything.

I’m not sure if FL is one of them either, and this is the first that I’ve heard of this law and I find it despicable. I live in a country that once revered the words tolerance and liberalism, which are now considered obscenities that are hissed into microphones coast to coast—black propaganda that is affecting every aspect of our lives. We need to bring back the 1949 Fairness in Broadcasting Doctrine which which upon repeal in 1989 and gave birth to hours and hours of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. We now have a 24 hour news channel that has won a Supreme Court ruling that allows them to lie to the public unchallenged. We need to revive America and once again give equal time to differing viewpoints.

Agree with both of you. I don’t know if Florida has a law, either, but many of the states that do have them are being challenged in court. (Some states have laws forbidding pharmacists from refusing to fill or refer a prescription, and those laws are being challenged, too.)

I get my prescriptions by mail and have for many years. I don’t know the people that fill them.

Concerning FL you might have heard that Tom Monaghan, the founder and owner of Dominoes Pizza, is developing a Catholic community in the state, read below (don’t be thrown that it starts out talking about Michigan, that is where he is from and where Dominoes HQ is).

from Wikipedia:

In early 2002 Monaghan sought to establish the Ave Maria University[19] in Ann Arbor, at Domino’s Farms, the large corporate office park that he owned and leased to Domino’s Pizza. The plans included a 250-foot crucifix – taller than the Statue of Liberty.[2] Local officials refused to approve the zoning change, forcing him to look elsewhere for a site. Eventually community leaders in Collier County, Florida, offered him a large undeveloped tract of land thirty miles east of Naples, Florida to develop the university.

In February 2006, ground was broken for the new Catholic university and town, Ave Maria, Florida.[20] A joint venture, in which Monaghan is a 50% partner with developer Barron Collier, controls all non-university real estate in the town, and plans to build 11,000 homes and several business districts. Pulte Homes has been signed up to build most of the private homes. Monaghan said in 2005 that any town retailers would not be allowed to sell contraceptives or pornography, a statement which drew legal and moral criticism from the ACLU.[21] Threatened with lawsuits, Monaghan and the developers went on a national PR campaign in March 2007 to retract the notion that Catholic doctrine could ever be enforced as law.[22] Defenders of Wildlife has also challenged the development, stating it is destroying habitat of the endangered Florida Panther.[23]

@JLeslie Supposedly this town would have to be democratically-run. I wonder what would happen if a bunch of progressives went down and bought all the houses there. Then they could vote Monaghan and his ilk out!

@Dr_Dredd Yes, housing laws would mean they could not discriminate on who could buy the houses, but the huge cross would probably deter the Jews at least, and so Boca Raton continues to thrive LOL. Actually, if the Amish can do it, I guess the Catholics can. Although, the Amish build their own homes I think. Are there Amish doctors? Or, do they seek medical care outside of the community? You’re in PA right? I thought you might know.

Not in PA any more, alas. However, when I lived in Pittsburgh, I do remember seeing some Amish (Mennonites?) at the Childrens Hospital. I think they seek specialized care outside of their communities.

Never happened to me, but then I’ve never taken anything controversial.
I believe that a person should be able to take his faith into account when dispensing medication. The client could always go someplace else, or find another pharmacist.

Unless that’s the only pharmacy within 100 miles. In my opinion, the onus should be on the pharmacist to make sure the patient gets what she has come for. Health care providers need to put patients first.

@Dr_Dredd
Mayhaps – by refusing to fill the prescription – they are?
For instance: there are many medications that do not interact well with others. Yet it happens that doctors will sometimes unwittingly prescribe two conflicting medications to a patient, possibly on two separate occasions, possibly not. Bad Things may happen as a result.
Now, an alert pharmacist may notice that the drugs in question conflict. He now bears a certain extra amount of responsibility for the patient’s well-being. Under these or similar circumstances, wouldn’t he be justified in refusing to fill the order in the event that the patient would not listen to reason, and the doctor inaccessible?

Seriously, when was the last time you found a single pharmacy within a 100mi. radius?

@Nullo I doubt @Dr_Dredd is talking about drugs that are contraindicated when prescribed with other drugs. In rural areas there might be very few options for filling a perscription. Easily there are many places in America that you might have to travel at least 30 miles. And, I am thinking the places more likely to have some religious reason to not fill the script is more likely in rural areas of the country.

@JLeslie
Let me ask you something: do you put your ethics first, or your job?
Imagine if one day your boss comes in and announces that starting that day, you were going to be doing something moderately unethical. Would you do it/

@Nullo There are professional ethics and there are personal ethics. If your personal ethics conflict with with the duties of your profession, have the balls to GTFO. It starts with allowing pharmacists to refuse patients on religious grounds. This sets a very bad precedent and should be nipped at the bud. Is a pharmacist, or any professional for that matter, who interprets her New Testament as a justification for her antisemitism, justified in treating her Jewish clients at a lower professional standard than other clients? Is a Jewish pharmacist justified in the same toward Catholic patients? Would a Christian fundamentalist be justified because his personal ethics, based upon his interpretation of his scriptures, in refusing to treat or insisting on giving substandard medical care to women that have had abortions, or patients with histories he didn’t like? Why even bother with the Hypocratic Oath? Why bother with professional ethics in the first place. Why even license professionals, if there are no reliable professional standards? This sound good to you?

A patient shouldn’t have to drive 100 miles, or 30 miles, or one city block in hopes of finding a pharmacist that won’t refuse them based on anything outside of that pharmacists professional scope. The needs of the patient must come first regardless of one’s personal ethics.

Agree with @Espiritus_Corvus. Someone who can’t meet the duties of a profession should not be in that profession. And @JLeslie is correct in that I’m not talking about someone refusing to fill a prescription that would interact with other drugs. I’m talking about a pharmacist deciding, because of his or her own moral beliefs, not to fill a legitimate and necessary prescription.

@Nullo I think @Espiritus_Corvus makes a good argument. You will notice above that I was a little lenient on the idea that Monaghan is trying to create a Catholic community. That if the Amish can do it why not the Catholics? So, I am not completely unsympathetic (is that a word?) to your point. I just believe so strongly that a patient should have control over their own body, so the idea of a pharmacist or doctor not prescribing or dispensing an available medication is difficult for me to agree with. I sometimes complain that doctors are gatekeepers regarding medicines that aren’t even controversial, which sometimes bothers me, but I won’t go off on that tangent.

I have a question, do you agree with the NRA’s stance that guns don’t kill people, people do? I know people who would agree with a doctors or pharmacists right not to give birth control, or the morning after pill; but agree that it is not the responsibilty of the person selling the gun when a person gets shot. I find that contradictory.

Interesting point, @JLeslie! I never thought of that.

@Dr_Dredd Yeah, I have never heard anyone else ever make that analogy. Glad you see the logic in it.

@JLeslie
My focus is coercion. A gun vendor is not required to sell a gun to anybody who asks for one.
Responding more directly, guns have many uses. Most of these uses are fairly benign, like target shooting, hunting, and giving your daughter’s no-good boyfriend something to think about. There are even tools that are functionally identical to firearms, for driving nails through metal and concrete. Obliquely, guns are not the only devices used to kill people: everything from baseball bats to screwdrivers to automobiles may be employed as weapons, sometimes with even greater lethality.
A gun may or may not be used to its fullest capacities. But a morning-after pill (I have no quarrel with conventional birth control) has no other use, and you don’t even need a background check .

Why would you need a background check? The morning-after pill prevents implantation, something that nature does all the time.

Also, the coercion argument isn’t very strong. What would you imagine the response to be if a gun store clerk DIDN’T sell a firearm to someone?

I’m continuing the guns/morning-after comparison that @JLeslie threw in. Gun ownership requires that you pass the NICS background check. They run it every single time you buy a gun.

I imagine that, should a gun store owner refuse to sell a person a gun, the would-be customer would make a fair amount of noise and then go elsewhere. Guns tend to make people polite.

Yes! The incompetent, illiterate, stingy fools!

@candide What happened?

I tried to get some seretide, for asthma, (one script allows 5 refills, but I don’t go through them quick enough) and the script had expired by one day! The pharmacist was fresh out of uni with a big ego and tried to tell me that I needed to see a doctor because there might be some health issues I should talk about. I told him that it was not his place to tell me that, that he was only there to dispense drugs!

how do i get the pharmacist to give my girlfriend her clonzopam(klonopin) when she needs it

@candide You are completely mistaken about the role of the pharmacist. He is required by law to warn you of the issues that might be associated with the medication and might lose his license if he failed to do so.

IT is b.s. that in the state
i live i Florida that because there is big problem with prescription pills such as roxicodone and methadone, that you get turned down from every pharmacy, and it is a big problem on the south east coast! such as Miami and ft.lauderdale! but if u find 1 over there they jump the price up 4 times normal! I live in naples the west coast and have been seeing a pain management dr. for years cause i broke my back! so now if my pharmacy that is a mom and pop which does not take insurance cause they want cash, well if they dont have them i am screwed because all the big franchises dont carry the meds. i need and if they do hey lie cause of all the abuse! so i cant get mymeds filled antwhere cause the other places they do sell them wont unless you have alreay been going to them for past year! and if you go to another county they wont except your scripts! its a bunch of crap!

@slicknick0313
I sympathize with you. The fact that Florida has become the pill mill for the whole Southeast due to the proliferation of unregulated pain clinics owned by non-medical people, multi-millionaires who hire unscrupulous doctors to run them, have put all doctors and pharmacists in Florida who must prescribe pain meds on the spot. Legitimate doctors are scared to take on new pain patients and the pharmacies are being held up by crazies on a daily basis and some are refusing to stock meds from vicodin to oxycontin, some are even refusing to deal in cash, Prescription painkiller addiction is at epidemic proportions in this state, LEOs and the governors of Kentucky and Tennessee are begging the officials of this state to remedy the problem.

They just busted a clinic here in the Tampa bay area a couple of days ago. It was 11 am and the DEA brought out a plastic bag with over $75K cash in it that they claimed was that morning’s take. There are a lot of legitimate patients suffering right now, especially new patients without regular doctors.

One of the solutions to the problem is to create a state prescription drug database hooked into all the pharmacies monitored by the DEA – like in many other states. But our new Governor, Rick Scott, the man who, as CEO of Columbia/HCA when they were busted for medicare fraud resulting in a $631 million dollar fine, then forced to resign with a $9.88 million settlement and $350 million dollars in stock (money with which he financed his run for governor) doesn’t want a database in Florida. It might have something to do with his share of Solantic Urgent Care Clinics to the tune of $65 million which he would prefer to remain unregulated and unmonitored. One can only speculate as this guy now pretty much runs the state and he has quashed two investigations since he entered office in January. A few days ago, he turned down $1 million from oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma as they were willing to fund the database.

Anyway, the one solution to the prescription pain med problem that has been successful in other states, is now a dead deal. So, you and many others are SOL for the time being.

And so are these people:

2,488 prescription drug deaths in Florida in 2009.

938 prescription drug deaths in the Tampa bay area counties of Pasco, Hillsborough, and Pinellas in 2009 (representing 38% of total deaths in Florida). These are counties with nowhere near the population densities of the Miami-Dade area.
.
3 children were born with prescription drugs in their systems this week at All Children’s Hospital, St. Petersburg. ~ St.Petersburg Times ¾/2011

I’ve always said you either had to be crazy or on drugs to vote Republican in this state. Governor Rick Scott’s refusal to have a drug database in this state is the new Republican “Get Out The Vote” plan to trade oxycontin for votes in future elections.~

You’re right, sicknick. It is a bunch crap. Especially since the voters of Florida knew all about this thanks to Carl Hiaasen’s excellent investigative reportage in the Miami Herald and 51% still voted for the son of a bitch.

@Espiritus_Corvus Probably both crazy and on drugs. After all, Gov. Scott did just torpedo an attempt to clamp down on the drugs.

“Addicts for Rick Scott!”

Yeah. Wait till the rest of America gets a load of this guy. He’s young, vibrant, and has his eye on the White House. And the Republicans love him.

It happened to me once. Not that the prescription violated his beliefs, but the doctor had made a mistake in the quantities. The pharmacist told me that the dosage was much too high, it would make me very ill and might even kill me. My doctor was extremely apologetic when I took it back (and relieved too: some pharmacists would not have bothered to warn me).