Posted on 03/16/2004 10:33:27 AM PST by Chummy
Pharmacist faces complaint over failure to dispense birth control
(Published Tuesday, March 16, 2004 09:10:04 AM CST)
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. -- The state Department of Regulation and Licensing has filed a complaint against a pharmacist who refused to fill a woman's birth control prescription because of his religious beliefs.
The complaint against Neil Noesen was filed with the Wisconsin Examining Board over an incident that happened in the summer of 2002.
It said Noesen, 30, was working as a fill-in pharmacist at the K-Mart Pharmacy in Menomonie and had told the managing pharmacist he wouldn't fill prescriptions for contraceptives that would cause what he believed to be an abortion. The managing pharmacist had apparently said he would fill such prescriptions when he was in.
But Noesen was the only pharmacist on duty on the weekend when the young woman came in to refill her prescription for birth control pills.
According to the complaint:
Noesen asked the woman whether she was using the drug for birth control. When she said yes, he told her he wouldn't fill it.
She asked him where she could go to have the prescription filled, "but because of his personal religious objections, (he) refused to provide (her) with that information."
Later that day, she went to a Wal-Mart Pharmacy for the refill. When the Wal-Mart pharmacist called Noesen to transfer the prescription, Noesen refused and said it was against his religious beliefs to do so.
The woman returned to the K-Mart with two police officers, but Noesen still refused, and police took no action.
The managing pharmacist refilled the prescription when he returned to work that Monday.
Department of Regulation and Licensing spokesman Christopher Klein said Noesen has 20 days to respond to the complaint, which was filed Friday.
Noesen was out of town and could not be reached for comment Monday.
That should be up to his employer.
and lose his license - no question.
Government has no business sticking its nose in this.
Who does the pharmacist work for - KMart or the government?
That's the root of the problem. Government originally claimed licenses were necessary to prevent charletans from selling snake oil. Predictibly, mission creep has taken hold and now every pharmacist is beholden to the state's every whim.
Free people do not need priviledges granted to them by their masters to earn a living. It is every free man's birthright to earn his way in this world by offering his services to others. And it is the market that will determine whether his services are desired. If the market decides pharmacies/pharmacists who will not fill contraceptive prescriptions are unaccaptable, they will not patronize him and he will be fired in effect by his customers.
As for the quality control issue that government used to sneak its camel nose under the tent, independent standards/endorsements can and should be used similar to UL approval for electrical products.
For me it couldn't be more clearcut. He deserves at the very least to face disciplinary action from whatever board oversees pharmacists, and his employer seriously needs to consider whether or not his employment should continue. He did not act in a professional manner, and definitely not in a way expected of a person in his profession. Moreover he opened himself, and more importantly his employer, to potential litigation. And 'moral issue' or not, he had no right to refuse to transfer the prescription. He did not only refuse to do his job in meeting the legitimate needs of the customer, but on top of that refused the customer to meet her needs anywhere else!
Government has no business sticking its nose in this. ----Freeee
And as for the issue of the government getting involved. Well, it should in this case! Why? Because pharmacists are subject to the state Dep. of Regulation and Licensing, and Wisconsin has a stake in ensuring that its pharmacists conduct themselves in a manner befitting their station. In the same way the medical board or the bar association would step in if a doctor or a lawyer, respectively, did something that did not fit with established protocol. This is not 'big guvumin' trying to meddle with things. The state dep. for regulation and licensing ensures that when you go to pick up a prescription that the pharmacist does not act in an improper manner. For example to ensure that when you go there you do not meet a person who, due to his personal religious beliefs, believes that you should not take medicine for things like pain, rheumatism, asthma, etc ....that instead all you need to do is pray and be healed. Or someone who thinks that the medicine the doctor prescribed is not the one you should be taking but something else. Or someone who feels he has the right to refuse to give the prescription, and then refuses to transfer it. Not all government regulations are bad, and this one is one of them.
Anyways the guy deserves to be investigated by the Wisonsin Examining Board for certain, and they need to apply some disciplinary action on him (partly for refusing to accept a legit prescription, but more importantly for refusing to transfer it). And his employer needs to think whether he should continue working there ....he opens them up to litigation. People have been sued for much less. And if he thinks he cannot fulfill his obligations fully then he needs to find something else to do.
In the same way if a mail delivery person felt that delivering smut magazines in the mail was anathema, and he decided to withhold them and dispose of them, then he would be way out of line (and i believe facing serious prosecution for mesisng with mail). If he didn't feel he could deliver any legitimate mail that came up then he needs to be doing something else.
Free people do not need priviledges granted to them by their masters to earn a living. It is every free man's birthright to earn his way in this world by offering his services to others. And it is the market that will determine whether his services are desired. ----Freeee
You can't be serious! I guess then that Crack Cocaine is ok. After all people do not need 'priviledges granted to them by their masters' to earn a living, it is every 'free man's birthright to earn his way in this world by offering his services to others,' and there is definitely a huge market for crack so the market has determined his 'services are desired!' Come on! And anyways, the government licensing thing is not to stop 'every free man' from excersing his 'birthright!' It is to ensure that when you go to get a prescription you do not meet Joe Blow pharmacist from hell who tries to sell you the most expensive drug in the store that has nothing to do with what is ailing you. Or from Jane Doe doctor to Usama who tries to take you for surgery when all you need is an apple a day and a good night's sleep. It is to prevent quacks from running things in medical Dodge!
If the 'guvermin' starts to tell doctors to prescribe tylenol only and no asprin then wake me up. If it is ensuring weird pharmacists don't withhold prescriptions then i am fine with it.
Something tells me that the same people who are saying what this guy did was not wrong would be screaming to high heaven if he refused a 10yr old girl Asthma prescription because last Sunday his spiritual mentor told him prayer is all is needed.
Post no. 16.
This post makes me wonder if the signature FR "WOD" threads still continue with all the usual suspects. It seems you haven't been exposed to the libertarian contingent here on FR yet spetznaz.
Have we seen the death of them? Have the libertines given up?
Does anyone care?
There is a bill pending in the state assembly to protect pharmacists in exactly this situation:
http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2003/data/AB-63.pdf
My state senator is a co-author (I don't see any democrats co-sponsoring) but the bill appears to be stuck in committee. My guess is that the Republicans are waiting until they have something to trade with the governor, who would probably veto a bill like this in a second.
The almost religious like anger toward this issue emanating those opposing this man can only be explained by remembering that birth control and abortion are the sacraments of the left.
"Hi, I'm Fred. I'm a pharmacist. See, I'm wearing a white coat, so I'm a pharmacist!"
"Qualifications? Well, none of my customers have ever returned to complain (rest their souls) so I must be good!"
The opinion expressed above is the most blatantly statist thing I've seen on Free Republic in a long time. Where does it say that any pharmacist is required to serve anyone in a non-emergency situation? If this women wanted to get her prescription filled somewhere else, she should have had the doctor she paid to prescribe the contraceptives do it, not this pharmacist who didn't owe her anything. Instead she called the police to enforce her will on this particular pharmacist. To even suggest that it is acceptable behavior to inflict your will upon those with moral objections is disgraceful.
I'm glad I don't have to live in your delusional world. By that same distorted logic, any doctor who refused to preform an abortion would also lose his license. No thanks, you can take your brand of socialistic authoritarianism back to the bankrupt single-payer systems from where it first originated.
Becuse qualifications and competency were invented by government. Who among us can claim to be competent without the government's magic seal of approval?
Private industry could never come up with a certification process, because they're not government of course. Education, dedication and reputation are all meaningless without our duly elected fairy godmother's wave of her magic wand.
How lucky we are to have such superhumans amongst us, to think for us. Surely they are heavensent.
You are simply in error since you are the one claiming that the state should require this pharmacist to fill a presciption in conflict with his conscious. The prescription is an order, not an asset, and the women in this article was free to have her doctor sent it elsewhere. Had the pharmacist done this for her, it would have been a courtesy, not a requirement.
I know many attorneys who have a religious objection to participating in divorce cases and even veterinarians who refuse to euthanize animals. One does not have to consent to do every occupational activity in a certain job before pursuing a career in that particular area. We live in what is still a free market economy and people are still only required to engage in behavior willingly. Any refusal is a matter for the employer to resolve, not the state.
Excuse me? Please explain how that follows. I never said he should be required to fill the prescription. You're completely and selectively missing the point. Even if that legislation you sited, there's nothing in there about refusing to transfer the prescription.
Who's prescription is it? Certainly not the pharmacists.
A state license to practice pharmacy is a permit, not a contract, and only obligates the holder of the license to perform within certain standards if engaging in business he or she chooses to participate in.
Can you please show us where petitfour ever said this?
You apparently don't know what a contract is. A contract is an agreement between two or more people which creates an obligation to do, or not do, something. The agreement creates a legal relationship of rights and duties. If the agreement is broken, then the law provides certain remedies. There are three factors necessary to create a contract: 1) an offer, 2) acceptance, and 3) consideration. One party makes an offer, the second party must accept the offer and there must be consideration exchanged. Consideration has to be something of value.
His license is a contract with the regulating body to adhere to set of professional standards they established and he accepted. He is most likely in breach of those standards. If he is in breach, the regulators have a legal right to terminate his contract.
You claimed in your post #5 that this pharmacist should lose his license for refusing to participate in this presciption, so the situations are completely analgous. If there is any ambiguity, it is in the level of participation. A analogy you might more easily understand would be a doctor losing his license for refusing to make an abortion referral.
Who's prescription is it? Certainly not the pharmacists.
The prescription is not an asset or even a physical object, but rather a request for service. In this case the prescription was called into the pharmacy by the prescribing doctor's office. The pharmacist simply refused her the coutesy of setting up the presciption with another pharmacy. The patient in this case was not asking to have a physical document returned to her, but rather have this pharmacist go through the trouble of setting it up with another pharmacist. He is not required by law or even ethics to do this, and she was completely wrong to call the police to enforce her will.
You claimed in your post #5 that this pharmacist should lose his license for refusing to participate in this presciption, so the situations are completely analgous. If there is any ambiguity, it is in the level of participation. A analogy you might more easily understand would be a doctor losing his license for refusing to make an abortion referral.
Who's prescription is it? Certainly not the pharmacists.
The prescription is not an asset or even a physical object, but rather a request for service. In this case the prescription was called into the pharmacy by the prescribing doctor's office. The pharmacist simply refused her the coutesy of setting up the presciption with another pharmacy. The patient in this case was not asking to have a physical document returned to her, but rather have this pharmacist go through the trouble of setting it up with another pharmacist. He is not required by law or even ethics to do this, and she was completely wrong to call the police to enforce her will.
You claimed that he should have participated in filling the prescription through referring it to another pharmacy rather than have her go back to her doctor. Since you claimed in your post #12 that your father was a pharmacist, you should know that a prescription is not an asset or even a physical object, but rather a request for service. In this case the prescription was called into the pharmacy by the prescribing doctor's office. The pharmacist simply refused her the courtesy of setting up the prescription with another pharmacy. I've had this happen to me when the pharmacy I had my antihistamine prescription called into discovered they were not in my insurance plan. I had to call my doctor back to have them send the prescription to another pharmacy. Although I was unhappy with the inconvenience, I would not have wanted that pharmacist to loose his license or even his job. The only difference in this case is that the pharmacist had a moral objection.
Referring the prescription to another pharmacy would be materially contributing to the filling of a morally objectionable prescription.
You apparently don't know what a license is. A pharmacist is no more required as part of his or her licensing requirements to distribute any and all prescribed pharmaceuticals than an attorney is required to defend any and all potential clients. In both cases, licenses define only the practice of the occupation the license holder for business he or she willingly enters into.
His license is a contract with the regulating body to adhere to set of professional standards they established and he accepted.
A license to practice pharmacy is not a contract to accept all business.
He is most likely in breach of those standards. If he is in breach, the regulators have a legal right to terminate his contract.
He isn't, and he won't lose his license. Your contract language is a fallacious red herring.
Now that you mention it, lying probably would have let this pharmacist off the hook from the standpoint of his continence moral objection.
Does the guy fill prescriptions for Ritalin?
I hope not! ;~)
Does the guy screen men who are having prescriptions for pain meds filled to see if they had a vasectomy earlier in the day?
I'm not sure if the pain medication would be a problem even if he did know the purpose and the cause. A similar analogy would be my refusal to drive a girl to an abortion clinic for an abortion but I would offer someone standing out in the rain a ride even if they were standing in front of an abortion clinic and had just had abortion.
Does he refuse to sell condoms?
My guess would be yes.
I think the difficulty for all of us in reading about these sorts of situations is that we need doctors and medical people in a way we don't need other professions. The danger is that this need can create a desire to dictate to these people what they have to do and not do. I think this may be a reason why so much of the world has socialized their health care and is suffering as a result.
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