Nashville Business Daily

Can you go to the health department to get prescriptions refilled?

My husband and I were both layed off. We have no health insurance. Can you see someone at the health department to get your high blood pressure and diabetes medicine refilled with new prescriptions?

Public Comments

1. Only if they have a program where a doctor will see you and write the prescriptions, free or at a low cost. A doctor must base the new prescriptions on your past and current condition. A doctor must decide whether your continued prescription should remain the same, be adjusted, or even be replaced by something else that might help you more. Many drugs should not be prescribed longer than a certain amount of time. Furthermore, your body could get used to one drug after a while and you may not still be getting the same results and you might be switched to something else for that reason. Also, sometimes a drug might have been found out to have side effects that weren't known about before and the doctor may decide to switch you to something safer. All these decisions will most often be determined based on your replies to the doctor's questions plus maybe one or more blood/urine tests. Of course, this is all based on the assumption that you'll be seeing a good doctor. I don't believe that the odds are good of that happening if you get a doctor doing your examination under a free or very low cost government program where there's a line a mile long with people who can't afford a regular doctor... by appointment, who's been chosen by the patient because he's/she's good.