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Medical Forum / General / Pharmacy / August 2005Di-cal-D
My doctor gave me a prescription yesterday for Di-Cal-D. Sixty tablets. I am really puzzled because this stuff is available OTC in bottles of 100 tablets. Why would I need to use a prescription? Ora On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:24:58 +0000, nospam wrote: > My doctor gave me a prescription yesterday for Di-Cal-D. Sixty tablets. > > I am really puzzled because this stuff is available OTC in bottles of 100 > tablets. Why would I need to use a prescription? > > Ora You should ask your doctor. Maybe the doctor had a reason for you to use a specific product. Dical-D is not your ordinary calcium/vitamin-D combination, since it uses calcium phosphate instead of the most common calcium carbonate or calcium citrate. Maybe the doctor wanted the extra phosphate. Who knows (other than your doctor)? >On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:24:58 +0000, nospam wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >calcium carbonate or calcium citrate. Maybe the doctor wanted the extra >phosphate. Who knows (other than your doctor)? I was not asking about the ingredients. I was wondering why, if it is available OTC in bottles of 100 tablets he would want me to get only 60 tablets. Ora > >On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:24:58 +0000, nospam wrote: > > [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Ora Are you supposed to take it twice a day? If so #60 would be a month's supply. Doctors are used to writing for a month's supply as that is what insurance companies and most people seem to want. Doctors can't be expected to remember how many tablets come in a bottle or even if it requires a Rx as they do not see the bottles daily like Pharmacists do. If you decide to deduct it from your Form 1040, if you have enough medical bills, then a prescription is proof that it was ordered for you by a doctor. ORA wrote: >My doctor gave me a prescription >...I am really puzzled because >this stuff is available OTC ... >Why would I need to use a prescription? A prescription is a simple, fast, effective way for a doctor to convey orders to a patients. If a doctor said to patients, take 1500mg daily of CaCO3, over 90% of the patients would be confused and require a LOT MORE counselling by the the doctor AND the pharmacist about what they are supposed to do. Many would still get it wrong. For many patients, a pharmacist is wasting his time to tell them an OTC equivalent is available. Some patients receive their medicine at little or no cost, and would rather wait 30 minutes for a bottle of Tylenol as a prescription for $0 or $1, instead of paying $3 and receiving it in 2 minutes. (Sometimes the cost differential is much greater.) Also there is a magical element. Some people think a prescription in inherently better than an OTC product: A doctor writes a magical incantation on a small paper, strange people waving their fingers over mysterious keyboards tell you the cost has been reduced, a woman in a white jacket hiding in a room consecrates a vial of secret tablets: How can that NOT be better than some old OTC product? |
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