Rule #1: Never believe bf when he walks out the door, leaves in your car, and has all his WWII gear with him and says he’ll only be gone about 2 hours. Yeah. So much for my plans. THANKS!!!! See, this wouldn’t be an issue because the original plans were for me to take my car, him to borrow the dad’s car, and mum to go to work. Mum didn’t go to work, we went shopping. Since she took me to the dr’s this morning, I went ahead and let him take my car (since it was only supposed to be for 2 hours, riiiiiiiiiiiiight). Anyway, get home from shopping, my car isn’t here, call the bf and ask him if he got lost. “Oh no, just had a long lunch, did some voice work, uniform demo.” “When will you be home?” “Oh, I’ll leave around 6PM.” “Yeah, thanks.” My plan, was to head over to my former gym and play around on the toys, bounce a bit, see how many different muscles I can make hurt in the morning. But, no. Yeah, could take the parent’s car, but that would be unfair, and we’re waiting for dinner. Next year, 2 cars.

In other news, I have an irritable bowel – from working seasonal full-time at a store during christmas. So what does my dr give to me? Zoloft. Of course, he suggested I try altering my diet a bit, along with meditation, and trying fibercon (or something like that) – after he saw my reaction to his questioning if I had heard of it.

Which spawned the badgering of my mum in regards to pharmaceutical costs. Interesting fact, Americans who go up to Canada to get their meds…may be paying less, because they have fixed prices, but they also have limited supplies because of it. So, Canadians are really being cheated by this phenomenon. Interesting fact, the reason why pharmaceutical costs are so high, is because the FDA requires about 10 different clinicals (when only 4 are absolutely necessary) for each drug and the companies don’t receive any subsidies from the hospitals for these trials (they pay full price). On top of that, there are separate clinical trials for both Europe and Japan, neither of which pays for the trials through their price fixing. So, result: new medicines never go to where the prices are fixed until the clinical costs are recouped (means they stay in the US), add the costs for the clinicals of every other drug that never makes it on to the market, in to that and you have the set price for “in-house” drugs.

My recommendation, ditch the over-kill on clinicals, or begin providing back-up for drug research. Require hospitals, where the clinicals are run, to provide breaks for the point of research (where they don’t). And a few other things I haven’t taken the time to ponder….

Oh yeah, interesting fact: most pharmaceutical companies have programs to provide their drugs to those that need them at below market prices. The problem? They require financial proof of inability to pay market price (e.g. tax returns). Of course, I had never heard of companies doing that, but apparently it’s publicized through dr’s networks (makes me wonder). Now, I can see where there’d be issues for the “tweeners”, who make more than the cut-off and less than the “i can really afford to subsidize this myself”ers, especially if there’s a barrage of prescriptions that they need to be on.

Definitely puts a new spin on American healthcare, for me. I’ve seen socialist medicine in the works, and that’s definitely not the way we want to go (unless we use that as a basis, with all additional costs covered through self-pay), but yeah, we do need an over-haul (like that wasn’t already known). If we decide to go with a salary cap on prescription drugs, then we really need to find a means to support the research and the development, or force Europe and Japan to foot their part of the bill for the clinicals (though, I think this should be done, regardless).