I’m prone to sinus infections. I had sinus infections so often that I had my sinuses x-rayed and was told that my sinuses were so small that I was doomed to suffer from a runny nose and migraines every time I had a cold. The only solution to this problem is surgery.
As a busy college student, surgery and recovery don’t fit well into my schedule. Therefore, I created a daily routine. Every time I felt like I was starting to experience these symptoms, I made an appointment at my local urgent care to get a prescription for antibiotics.
These sinus infections are predictable and annoying, making frequent trips to the emergency room a chore. So we tried to streamline the process of getting prescriptions without going to the doctor. I Googled “how to get sinus medicine online” and found Good R It’s coming up.
I explored the site and quickly realized that I might be able to get something important to me. amoxicillin I didn’t pay for the Uber, I didn’t wait an hour, and I was told it was the same symptoms as usual. I was trying to chat online with a health care provider to discuss my problem and get medication, but I was told that I would have to pay $19.99 plus additional fees for a “discounted price” prescription to get the actual medication. I found out something. It was insurance.
GoodRx and similar sites, e.g. single carea healthcare venture based on innovative entrepreneurship. These streamline the prescription process and bypass traditional medical institutions to some extent. Online medical providers that sell prescription drugs can be beneficial, but only if they are subject to strict government regulation.
Since 2011, GoodRx has been saving consumers 65 billion dollars We sell prescription drugs through partnerships with manufacturers and software that identifies lower-cost alternatives. This service and its counterparts are designed to bring transparency to the healthcare industry.
Their services are marketed to busy individuals to make medicines more accessible by offering them at discounted rates, sometimes with a total cost that is less than your insurance co-pay. Individuals can also refill the amount they need psychotropic drugs Drugs other than those on the restricted drug list.
In an ideal world, healthcare would be fully accessible and we wouldn’t need tools like GoodRx to streamline visits and reduce costs. In 2020, the Pew Research Center found that: 63% of American adults believe in government-funded health care for all. However, in a polarized political system, it is highly unlikely that a comprehensive health care bill would be passed because it would disrupt the current health care system. deep bond to American capitalism. In the meantime, GoodRx is a viable alternative.
Although entrepreneurship may be a controversial solution to healthcare disparities, regulated entrepreneurship in the healthcare sector has positive socio-economic impacts. in meta-analysis Researchers from the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Public Health have found that entrepreneurship has a net positive impact on health care and innovation in the United States.
While there are other ideal paths to a more efficient healthcare system, entrepreneurship has created immeasurable positive change. In 2020, 350,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. At the time, there were no vaccines or treatments. Thankfully, groups driven by both profit and the public interest raced to produce effective vaccines that could ultimately prevent putative infections. 14.4 million Deaths (number of deaths) However, companies are often acquired by large pharmaceutical companies through acquisitions, and they lose their ethical compass.
Therefore, supporting these ventures as a solution in the healthcare sector is not possible without strict policies and regulations. Services like GoodRx pose risks in terms of overprescription and predatory user data policies. Recently, GoodRx $1.5 million Civil penalties for unauthorized data sharing with platforms like Facebook and Google. Data sharing undermines online health service providers’ mission to reduce costs and harms the very people they claim to help.
There is still value in the framework of online medical services. However, policy development must ensure that this approach is ethical. Stronger data protection laws need to be enforced. Legislation requiring companies to clarify additional costs separately from insurance would reduce confusion and require closer monitoring of doctor-patient interactions. Logging into a telemedicine appointment and getting a prescription for a drug is not that easy, especially when the drug can be misused.
Ethics must be at the center of all decisions regarding online health services.
As advances change the way we receive care, we must consider the associated risks. For example, is it okay to have a long chat with your doctor to diagnose your illness and prescribe medication, even if it’s something as common as an antibiotic?
Going forward, we need to accept that technology, entrepreneurship, and healthcare will become increasingly intertwined. And now is the time to enact regulatory policies before major problems arise. Lawmakers should consider ways to ensure patient trust in health care providers, both in-person and online. While it is an amazing accomplishment to make it easier for people to receive care and purchase medicines at lower costs, patient safety and care must remain a top priority. Profit-driven companies should not dominate this change. Instead, the focus should be on innovation that aims for just change within the constraints of capitalism.
Rachel Evans is an opinion analyst who writes about health care and wellness in American politics and culture. She can be reached at [email protected].
