DEAR ABBY: I recently started to work at a pharmacy as an intern, and I go home every night frustrated to tears by what I see in a day's work.
There are medical claims, hundreds of them daily. Many are for preventable sicknesses that could be cured by over-the-counter drugs. Some people abuse the emergency rooms just to get prescriptions necessary for Medicaid. An example is cough syrup. Once again, the system pays a couple of hundred dollars for a child with a common cold whose parents wouldn't spring the $3.99 it would cost for a bottle of cough syrup.
Abby, some people are so uneducated they don't know how to take the medicine. (Have you ever known anyone to eat a suppository?)
I got a call the other day from a girl who asked me whether or not she's pregnant when there are two blue lines on the stick. (She's 12 years old and didn't know how to read a package insert to take the pregnancy test!)
Wait -- there's more. The abuse of the system isn't happening only in health care and pharmacy; we had a job available that women applied for via the unemployment office just to get their papers signed so they could keep drawing welfare or unemployment benefits. Some people have even tried to use food stamps to pay for narcotics!
I am so disgusted -- maybe I'll move to Canada. -- ANGELA IN SAVANNAH
DEAR ANGELA: Please don't move to Canada. We need people like you in the U.S.A.