Ashamed 731 by Pat Conrad MD

Saying what I actually think of the federal government would probably get me banned from this website, and enlarge what I’m sure is an ample FBI file somewhere.  So I leave it to the reader’s imagination…

…Today I renewed my DEA license, you know, the cute little government card that lets me dispense and prescribe happy pills to patients who reside in a society that has determined they must be protected from the unregulated.  In 2006 this exercise cost $390.  Today, my prostration of necessity cost $731, an increase of 187%, or 31% per year!  Call me sheltered, but I don’t recall any big news stories lately on inflation anywhere near this magnitude.  So what have I gotten for my extra cost?

In recent years  “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the DEA could set “reasonable fees” to recover the costs of diversion control … [The] drug control agency said it is required by law to recover with fees the costs of “activities related to the registration and control of the manufacture, distribution and dispensing, importation and exportation of controlled substances and chemicals.” The Controlled Substances Act authorizes the attorney general to charge “reasonable fees” related to the registration and control of these substances…”

So what is “reasonable”?  In the past decade I have seen friends, both physicians and nurses, fall into horrible prescription med addiction,  and the federal debt enlarged by billions in an unwinable war on drugs.  And every day I go to work, every single day, I’m beset with drug seekers for whom the federal government that I just paid will prosecute me if I dispense a bit too freely.  Other than that, I have gotten nothing of value for my additional money.

Is $731 a lot to you?  Maybe not, but it sure is to me.  And the worst part of all, is that it makes me feel like a chump, ashamed to have paid extortion to a monster that would make the worst gangster blush.

Do you want to pass this off as “just the cost of doing business?”  Rationalize if it helps, but this is all just more hidden class warfare for make-work drone jobs.  And no, knowing that all other docs have to do the same does not make it better, anymore than sitting in a lifeboat full of idiots makes one feel less cold and wet.