by Kieron McFadden
According to the American Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) since 2004, a single psychiatrist in Miami has prescribed close to a mind-boggling 14 million pills to Medicaid patients. By my reckoning that is an incredible 760 or so a day, each and every day for five years - at a cost to American taxpayers of $43 million, and all from ONE psychiatrist!
The psychiatrist in question, Fernando Mendez Villamil would have had to write out about 1,000 prescriptions without fail every week, to prescribe that many pills and records show that he did indeed issue nearly 285,000 prescriptions in a six year period.
A report released for the period 2007-09 confirmed Villamil's status as the most prolific prescriber of all Miami's doctors but new data now shows that 2007-09 was modest compared to the years before and a study of the timeline suggests that his rate of prescribing slowed considerably after the Miami authorities began introducing computerised tracking of prescriptions and other measures to control the expenditure of tax payers' dollars.
Villamil's most prolific year in the period studied was 2004. In that year he managed to issue about 62,400 prescriptions (and the AHCA counts a refill as a prescription) at a cost to Medicaid of $12.2 million. 285 00 prescriptions in six years, assuming the psychiatrist wrote just five words on each prescription, amounts to as much writing as a paperback novel, which is some output!
These figures suggest that either Villamil was suffering from aggressive hypergraphic psychobabblia (AHP - a mental illness suffered only by psychiatrists and characterized by an overwhelming compulsion to drug people for no apparent reason, and an inability to stop writing out expensive drug prescriptions) or the people of Miami (well, those that visit Villamil at any rate) are more incurably mentally ill than anyone else on the planet!
However, it is not all bad news for Miami for, whereas most American officialdom still suffers from PBND (Pharmaceutical Brown-Nose Disorder - a compulsive desire to help drug companies neutralize the citizenry) those in Miami appear to be undergoing an encouraging recovery of their sanity.
Typical of this resurgence in the body politic is Sen. Don Gaetz, chairman of the health regulation committee, who commented that Villamil "appears to be taking advantage of the taxpayers of Florida and draining money away from legitimate patients. He should be the poster boy for tougher enforcement actions."
This information was originally released to the publication "Health News Florida" following a freedom-of-information request.
According to the above mentioned journal, when told of the results of the review, Villamil's attorney, Robert Pelier said, "Based on the amount of patients he sees, it's well within normal range."
Normal compared with what? We hear you ask. The drugging activities of other psychiatrists? After all, 62400 prescriptions in one year, works out at over 1200 a week (allowing a couple of weeks off to take a breather from all that prescription writing) and assuming a 40 hour week that's one prescription written out every 2 minutes!
How does the good "doctor" find time to TALK to his patients? Or examine them for the various physical conditions that can cause "mental illness" symptoms and that can be rectifed by safe non-drug (but less profitable) means? Or does he skip the hard work and go straight for the drugging?
Also, any medical doctor of any value actually CURES a goodly number of the patients he sees. But how many of any psychiatrist's patients are actually CURED (ie, made well) as opposed to the number who remain uncured and thus a source of revenue for the psycho-pharmacy (and of cost to the taxpayer) for life?
I think we should be told.
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