Permission To Carry Emergency Medications At School: Fill & Download for Free

I would ask to see the band’s touring schedule, commitment contracts, pay schedule etc. I would need to meet the tour manager and ask for his/her references and credentials. It is possible that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your child.It is also possible that this is a pipe dream and there is no real plan, just a hope for stardom.IF, and only IF, the band has an actual plan in place for touring, I would say that you should let them do it. Assuming your child is a minor, you will need to make sure that the tour manager has a signed, notarized letter from you giving permission to transport the minor across state lines, get emergency medical treatment if needed, etc. You will need to give your child a current copy of his/her insurance card. Get a current government issued state id or passport and have copies made to keep at home and for him/her to carry along.You may want to contact your local college/high school sports team to see what steps they have to take for away games. The process would be similar.A legitimate chance at success should not be passed up. Education, luckily, is something that can be returned to and can’t be taken away. But, dropping out is not a step to take lightly or without a plan.

Several years ago, I was working late at school, helping the drama teacher with a play the drama students were performing for their parents. I worked backstage. The hustle and bustle of a live performance means everyone has a job and has to do it. I was the prompter for students who needed a nudge with remembering their lines.About half an hour into the production, I began feeling like I had the flu. No problem, I told myself. I would go home after the play and get some rest and take the next day off if necessary. A half hour later, I was feeling worse. It must be a really bad case of the flu.I finally told the drama teacher I was sick and had to leave. She found someone who could take on my responsibilities as prompter.I got to the car, poured myself into the driver’s seat, and headed for home—an hour away in the mountains, where there was nothing resembling a hospital within 20 miles. Things got worse in a short time, so I got off the freeway about 10 miles later and headed for the nearest hospital emergency room, still hanging my self-diagnosis hat on the flu. I was nauseated, had body aches, and a fever. I was checked into the ER immediately.No one told me anything, but I was tested for everything and IV antibiotics were suddenly streaming into my system. After getting stabilized, I was transferred by ambulance to my own hospital 30 miles distant. No one had yet given me a diagnosis, but they were really working on me, pushing the antibiotics like crazy. From that, I knew I had an infection of some sort, but I was still hanging my hat on some kind of flu or flu-like infection. I was perfectly lucid and carrying on conversations with the hospital staff and the ambulance people. It was a 40-minute ride to the hospital. The only problem I could see was that my car was back at the first hospital, and I couldn’t get it.Treatment continued at my hospital, and I was admitted before morning. Still no word on the illness. Finally, I asked what was going on. I did not feel great and wanted to know what on earth was garnering all this attention.I got the attention of a nurse and asked what was happening. That did not create any excitement, just a few words to say I had sepsis. Sepsis? That is a deadly blood infection that has a very high mortality rate. I asked for a doctor to explain it to me. It was indeed sepsis, probably the result of a kidney infection I was unaware I had. I was dumbfounded.At this point, all my organ systems were already shutting down. The doctors were treating it with big-gun antibiotics and were keeping me hydrated. Had I not gone to the ER with what I thought was the flu, I would have been dead within 24 hours. That got my attention. What a sobering thought that was! They were too busy saving my life to talk about it. Of course, I gave them permission to treat me. Had I not, it would have been the last thing I didn’t do in this lifetime.The seriousness of the situation then hit me. Here I was, being treated for an often fatal infection, and not understanding why I was in this predicament. I had no symptoms of impending doom. And this can happen so easily. Sepsis may not have any symptoms until it is too late to treat it successfully. However, with treatment, I did get better. After a few days of intensive hospital treatment, I was discharged—much improved and out of danger.A case of the flu that I was trying to ignore turned into one of the worst infections there is. I had no warning and I did not have any symptoms leading up to that night at the student presentation. And I had taught all day, gone out to dinner, and checked in backstage, all while feeling fine. It turned out that I was the most dramatic of all. I was relieved to know what it was but more relieved that they were treating it and having some success.Since that incident, I’ve had a renewed interest in keeping myself heathy and noting symptoms that need the attention of a doctor. I have had sepsis two other times—both in the hospital while being treated for something else and where doctors were able to get treatment going sooner. Having almost died, however, I took those two with less trepidation and let the doctors work their medical marvels to get me on my feet much sooner.Do not ignore symptoms; have them addressed by a doctor before it is too late. In the case of sepsis, you do not get over it on your own. On your own, you die. I now have stage three CKD. And, yes, friends picked up my car keys and my car, then came to pick me up when I was discharged from the hospital.

There are millions of regulations. Where do you start?Preface CommentaryThis answer hit a lot of irrational nerves. The question is about which regulations. But there are a lot. I have selected one particular set of regulations from the FDA. (Because expensive drug prices are an issue near and dear to me.) I described how the regulations protects an entrenched business. And keeps out affordable competitor products.To be clear:I did not here say the FDA should be abolished.I did not say that drug safety is irrelevant.I did not say that drug companies shouldn’t recover their costs of research and development. (Why in the world would anyone say that?)I did not claim that any particular political party is the cause. It’s not, directly, a partisan issue.If you’re going to leave a knee-jerk comment defending something that isn’t about the regulation and its effects, just don’t.Original AnswerTake the Epipen (usually sold as a two-pack) manufactured by Mylan.Before the Epipen, people with severe allergies would carry a syringe, a needle, a glass ampule of epinephrine, swabs, a tourniquet, etc. And, when needed, attach the needle to the syringe; break the glass ampule; withdraw and dose the epinephrine into the syringe; apply a tourniquet; and inject the drug. Hopefully, before acute anaphylactic shock prevents the person from self-treating.In contrast, the Epipen is an epinephrine autoinjector. So simple a grade-school child can use it in an emergency.The Epipen appeared in the 1980s. It cost about $60-80 (two-pack). Not cheap, but potentially very useful.The Epipen is about 40 years old now, and it's no longer patented. (That gets complicated). In 2017, an Epipen (two-pack) cost about $100. The cost for an Epipen (two-pack) today? About $600. (Mylan's Epipen has about 90% of the autoinjector market share.) Why?Did Mylan improve the Epipen? No, not really.Is the drug more expensive? No, it's cheaper than ever (it costs an estimated $3 for Mylan to manufacture an Epipen. The big cost is in the plastic and packaging.)Is it safer? No, it's the same product.Is it easier to use? No, it's still a very simple point-and-inject.So, why has the price of the drug increased 750%?Because go fuck yourself, says Mylan’s CEO. Who else are you going to buy an Epipen from?The FDA regulates applications for new drugs by 21 C.F.R. 314. These regulations (and the hundreds that go with it) make it very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive for a competitor to even begin to develop a generic. It takes millions of dollars just to file the paperwork..And that’s not to sell it. That’s to begin the process by which the drug can be developed (i.e. researched). You can’t even do serious drug research until you pay millions of dollars for permission to do it. And if you somehow make it through multiple stages of clinical trials, only then you can you maybe start thinking about selling the drug.But who knows? The FDA can still reject your application. If they feel like it. (There's often been talk of making exceptions for generics. But it's never happened in practice. And it never really will.)All this for a compound that's naturally made by the human body. Been sold as a drug for treatment of anaphylaxis for decades. And which, frankly, just isn't very hard to make.Now, when someone has ponied up the money, Mylan uses patent law and regulations--without any reasonable chance of success in court--to start burning their smaller competitors’ budgets in baseless litigation. To get them to quit “voluntarily”.The effect? Excessive regulation gives a do-nothing pharmaceutical company like Mylan a market power it could not otherwise have.Now, people who know a little something will say, “But why didn’t they file an abbreviated new drug application? So it didn’t cost as much or take as much time?”Well, it still takes a huge amount of time and money. And, in Mylan’s case, the FDA considers the autoinjector device to be a drug which requires its own application as a medical device. And those autoinjectors are periodically tweaked to maintain patentability. Which means exact copies of a previously approved device risks litigation, even if the patent may really be junk (which it probably is). So, functionally similar variants of the injector device need their own new applications. More or less.Oh. What I forgot to mention. Mylan didn’t invent the Epipen. Mylan bought the rights to make the Epipen in 2007. When the Epipen (two-pack) still cost about $100. Then, Mylan jacked up the price about 500% over roughly 10 years.Now, I’m not against Mylan investing in an asset and getting a good return. Even an above-market return. But doesn’t that seem a bit outrageous?That’s what excessive government regulation does to markets. It makes simple things unaffordable. It uses government power to guarantee excessive profits to wealthy people which the free market would never tolerate.Remember this guy?A few years ago, Martin Shkreli hiked the price of an antifungal drug used by HIV patients. Where the drug was already off-patent and simple to manufacture.He knows Mylan’s business model. (And who are we kidding, it’s not just Mylan.)So, Shkreli acquired the rights to use the “application” that had already cleared the FDA regulation. He bought the rights.Because it's so expensive for any competitor to clear the FDA regulatory process, Shkreli knew he could count on people to pay whatever price his company asked.Even though every major and minor pharmaceutical company could make the drug.Now, when that happened, people vilified Shkreli. And yeah, perhaps it was a jerk move. But that’s where the criticism stopped. No one really commented, “Gee. You know, the FDA seems to be the root-cause of the problem here.”It’s not like this was something new. He just happened to pick on AIDS patients.People tend not to think too much about kids with severe allergies. Or chronic asthma. Here’s my favorite. Advair Diskus 500/50 made by GlaxoSmithKline.It’s an inhaler that chronic asthmatics can use every day to control their asthma.This drug contains two simple steroids that are simple to manufacture. Both drugs are off-patent. (Again, note the use of the inhaler device. This device was patented by GlaxoSmithKline. Again, the device itself is considered a drug by the FDA.)Each dose contains 550 micrograms of drug. A dose of the actual medication costs less than 1 cent to manufacture. There are 60 doses in this inhaler. The plastic itself costs about 80 cents. The who thing costs about $3 to manufacture.The average retail price of Advair 500/50 today? $445.Now—regardless of what you think about illegal drugs—everyone knows that government regulation makes them more expensive. Heroin? Costs about $50 per gram. High-purity cocaine? About $100 per gram.Well, the same rules about regulation apply to legal drugs as well. Do the math, Advair 500/50 sells for about $890,000 per gram of actual medication.I’ll put it this way: Walter White could have made a helluva lot money if he went legit. And let the FDA watch his back.While little children can’t breathe. Because mommy and daddy couldn’t afford $445 per month on medication that really costs less than a McDonald’s Big Mac.Many people justify the FDA as caring about safety. They see safety is a good idea (and it is). And they’re right! But they very wrongly assume that safety is what motivates the FDA.In reality, the FDA has an absolutely horrifying track-record for safety (fen phen, vioxx, meridian, accutane, darvocet, cylert, quaalude--the list goes on).The FDA is overly cautious, corrupt, and petty. Its regulations serve the FDA first and its corporate fee-payers second. Patients are a bit of an afterthought. These excessive regulations keeps drug prices insanely high and indirectly kills a whole lot of people.And the FDA is just one department. And that's just one regulation.