Well, considering the prices, they may well be made of platnium. Or diamonds. And you know what I’m talking about if you take prescription drugs, and happen to have the misfortune of not having health insurance or a piddly drug plan–and have double the misfortune of not living in a border state. You know, like scooting down to Tijuana to fill up on your Retin-A and Lipitor, or heading up north to Toronto to make a similar score.

Here’s the sad truth: Americans pay more for brand-name prescription drugs than anyone else in the world. Isn’t that a dubious honor. It assumes that either we are all very wealthy and don’t notice the missing cash in our wallets, or else we enjoy being ripped off.

From CBSnews.com:

Why? Well, the drug companies and the government say we have to, so the companies can keep developing new drugs.

Rost has taken the risky and possibly career-shattering step of opposing his own employer, and the rest of the drug industry, by saying America can have cheaper drugs if it set up a system like the one in Europe.

Now see if these prices don’t set you in a tizzy. Yo, you lipitor users–read this and weep. The commonly prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, made by Pfizer, the company he works for. In the United States, the full retail price is about $76 dollars for a month’s supply. The exact same drug costs $55 dollars in Canada and just $43 dollars in Italy.

The price in Italy in almost half of what it sells for here, and I bet it’s even lower in Mexico.

Rost argues patients shouldn’t have to travel to other countries to obtain cheaper drugs, but rather the discounted drugs should come to them. That’s what happens in Europe …

In Europe, pharmaceutical companies sell the exact same drug to different countries at different prices. An entire industry has been created that buys up drugs in countries where they are cheaper and then repackages and sells them in countries where they’re more expensive, at a discount — this is known as parallel trading.

However, American drug makers want no part of that system, and Pfizer, in a statement by its vice president of global security, said the practice can be potentially dangerous. However, when asked if anyone had been harmed by this method of selling drugs in Europe, the Pfizer VP couldn’t recall a single incident.

Rost argues that America’s views on parallel trading are clearly a matter of profits, not a matter of safety.

A bill has been introduced in the Senate that, if passed, would allow the United States to import cheaper drugs from other countries like Europe does. While the pharmaceutical industry opposes it, large drug companies have announced they are expanding their programs to offer low-cost drugs to the poor.

I guess things are going to keep cooking. It’s quite interesting that Rost works for Pfizer (or does he still have a job?) and has been so vocal and active in trying to change the system, which will inevitably cause pharm companies to lose some revenue.

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Midsummer’s night eve. Enjoy it, because now the days will start to get shorter!

I guess it really doesn’t signal the start of summer vacation anymore for kids, because it seems that schools are letting out earlier and earlier. Some of them end in mid-May, from what I hear. I remember that we went to school up until June 30. Sitting in those stifling hot, foul smelling, un-airconditioned classrooms….

Anyway, happy solstice. I guess today is a good day to visit Stonehenge.

What comes to mind if you see the names Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, or Amelia Earhart? Do you think “nurse?” Probably not.

Okay, here’s another question. If you see the name Clara Barton, what comes to mind? Do you think “nurse?” Probably yes.

Now I am about to destroy a deeply embedded mythology about Clara Barton. If you don’t consider Whitman, Alcott, or Earhart to be nurses, then neither was Barton.

There was an interesting little article, written by Representative Paul Casey, in the Stoneham Sun, about an effort in Massachusetts to protect nurse staffing levels in the Commonwealth. Among the initiatives is the “Patient Safety Act”, which requires that hospitals maintain adequate nurse complements.

Sounds good. Sounds like some real action is being taken for both patients and nurses. But then they have to ruin it…

The Patient Safety Act also takes important steps to attract more nurses to Massachusetts hospitals. This bill creates the “Clara Barton Nursing Excellence” program, which includes mentoring and hospital/state partnership grants, scholarships and loan repayment services. By providing more support to potential nurses, the dearth of health providers and their educators that currently exists will hopefully be effectively addressed and reversed. The measure also streamlines the hiring procedures for nurses and centralizes all staffing data within the nurse-run Massachusetts Center for Nursing.

Why oh why is the program being named after Clara Barton? It seems that when anyone needs to conjure up a nurse, they call on either Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton. At least, Nightingale wanted to be a nurse and had an interest in it. But Barton was not a nurse, she was not trained as a nurse, nor did she serve in the Civil War out of a deep desire to do nursing. And it really is tiring to hear of Barton being called the “American Forence Nightingale,” or being referred to in encyclopedias and history books as “American nurse.”

Will the Real Clara Barton Stand up and Take a Bow?

Barton was born on Christmas day in 1821 in Oxford, MA. Okay, so she is a Massachusetts native but still no reason to name a nursing program after her. Let’s move along with her life. Her first career was as a schoolteacher, and her most notable antebellum achievement was the establishment of a free public school in Bordentown, N.J.

In 1861 Barton was living in Washington, D.C., working at the U.S. Patent Office, and had the distinction of being the first female patent clerk. When the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in the city after the Baltimore Riots, she organized a relief program for the soldiers, beginning a lifetime of philanthropy. Now here is where the “nursing” comes in. When Barton learned that many of the wounded from First Bull Run had suffered, not from want of attention but from need of medical supplies, she advertised for donations and began an independent organization to distribute goods. The relief operation was successful, and the following year she was granted her a general pass to travel with army ambulances “for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them.”

So for the next three years, Barton was active in getting supplies to the front lines and helping to care for the wounded. She also expanded her concept of soldier aid, organizing a program for locating men listed as missing in action. Through interviews with Union soldiers returning from Southern prisons, she was often able to determine the status of some of the missing and notify families.

When the war ended, so did her nursing career. It lasted three years out of a lifetime which lasted 91 years. Following the war, she continued working with the federal government in locating missing soldiers. And then for her most famous job–in 1881, she founded the American Red Cross, in conjunction with the International Red Cross. She remained as head of the Red Cross almost until the day she died, on April 12, 1912.

Barton was a schoolteacher, patent clerk, nurse, philanthropist, and your basic organizer. Why this woman is consistantly pinned with the title of nurse, a role which she had for barely 3 years and which was combined with a lot of other activity, is beyond me. Nursing is simply part of the mix of this woman’s varied life, just one brief moment in a lifetime filled with many many memorable moments.

Now, getting back to the names listed above. Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott both volunteered as nurses during the Civil War. Do we think of them as nurses today? Amelia Earhart volunteered during WW I, as did English writer Vera Brittain, who wrote an astounding memoir about her experience. Do we consider them nurses? Do people talk about the “nurse” Amelia Earhart who was lost during her flight around the world? Do we talk about the books that the “nurse” Walt Whitman wrote?

So why this label on Barton, who was no more a nurse than any other volunteer? If anything, Barton’s label should be philanthropist, because that is what she spent the bulk of her life doing, even during her school teaching years.

Now, getting back to the nursing initiative in Massachusetts. It is that difficult for them to find the name of a real nurse in Mass, and hopefully a more contemporary one, to name the program after? Surely there must be some nurse who has gone above and beyond the call of duty and warrents being singled out. I find it hard to believe that there is not one nurse in the entire state, or even in New England, who is worthy of having an initiative named after her (or him). How about a real nurse who actually trained as one, who wanted to work in nursing, and did so–rather than a fleeting volunteer during wartime.

Now isn’t this a novel concept. Imagine honoring a real nurse, rather than our tried and true mythological ones. And selecting the name of a lesser known personality not only better honors the profession, but also is a chance to teach a little nursing history.