On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:58:53 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

As far as the content of the story goes, with the ongoing restructuring of
the health service, I very much doubt that medicines are being wasted in the
way described, as an 'across the board' event. For sure, somebody has
probably seen this being done in some health establishment somewhere, and
extrapolated this into common practice.

In the USA, there's a rule that bans the re-use or recycling of any
hospital dispensers, containers, plates, cups, trays, and such. I
think this started in about 2002. The official justification was to
help control hospital infections. The reality was a rather large
increase in costs, and an excuse for an increase in hospital care
charges. I asked what happens to all that stuff... high temp
incineration.

We also have a problem with Medicare fraud. However, it's not the
patients that are doing it. It's often medical organizations, that
build "paper" clinics, and fabricate fraudulent charges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_fraud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Medicaid_Fraud
In the past, this was somewhat tolerated by the government for
hospitals because they were using creative Medicare charges to fund
marginal services, such as trauma care centers, non-paying indigent
care, and some counseling, that would otherwise have collapsed.

Even with all the fraud, the total costs of Medicare and the impending
Obamacare, is many orders of magnitude greater. With an annual cost
approching trillions of dollars, a few dollars saves on squeezing all
the medicine out of a tube isn't going to have much of an impact.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558