Legal Online Consultations for Medication

The U.S. is one of the few countries in the industrialized world without public health care for all. While there are free clinics all over the country people often do not know about these and more often than ever have been turning to the Internet for medical needs ranging from advice to diagnosis and medication. While there are legal ways to buy medication online via an online consultation, the issue is a bit complex.

The FDA and Online Consultations

• In the U.S. where medicine is not free and thus even a phone conversation with medical personnel can cost you, online consultations are becoming more popular. The FDA does not have an official stance on this issue though they believe the practice to be a "sub-standard" manner of prescribing medicine. Each state has different laws pertaining to online consultations and medications that can be sold online by remote consultation vary state by state. The FDA only bans controlled substances, narcotics such as mind- and mood-altering drugs, to be sold via remote consultation.

Online Consultations via Webcam

• The online medical consultation comes in a few forms. The first of which is a webcam consultation followed by a doctor writing a prescription that is sent to the patient via a pharmacy the doctor is associated with. This is often set up by a third party company and most doctors tend to just rubber stamp (or automatically approve) almost any prescriptions unless serious contraindications are seen.

  The Mayo Clinic did a study that showed men seeking a less embarrassing manner of obtaining erectile dysfunction medication had no more or less risk than their counterparts seen in an office when calling one of these online medical doctors for a phone interview and prescription. Despite this study from such a reputable clinic, this practice is still not widely respected in the medical community.

Online Form Only Consultations

• Heading toward the bottom rung on the ladder in terms of respectability is the so-called online form only consultation. An online form consultation is a combination of filling out a form of questions which is tantamount to cheating on a test. The questions ask blatantly whether the patient suffers certain ailments, depending on the drug being ordered, and whether there are any contraindications (reasons) for the doctor to deny a prescription. These pharmacies are legal despite many people believing they are not. There are certain states that do not allow the shipment of certain medications but by and large an online consultation form is examined by a doctor, rubber stamped, sent to a pharmacy and mailed overnight via Federal Express.

Illegal Foreign Pharmacies

• Most of the time if you go to a search engine seeking an online consultation and drug you will get a plethora of links to choose from. These are almost inevitably foreign pharmacies. Some will claim that the FDA does in fact allow import for personal use and others make no bones about the fact that no prescription or consult is required. The latter actually even gives instructions as to what to do should your shipment be caught by customs and offers guarantees such as reshipments or refunds in such instances.

  These are blatantly illegal and often sell drugs you could go to prison for obtaining. The offshore pharmacies have been very clever in how they get the medications into the country with methods ranging from placing them in DVD cases to sending them so packed with string and other debris around them that it is impossible to decipher what they are shipping.

Expert Insight

• Private health systems remain the best in the world but do leave a gap that online pharmacies and consultations fill. While it is relatively safe to prescribe many medications, many others that the FDA do not consider controlled ought to be controlled substances. As such the pharmaceutical companies influence the FDA and in turn some dangerous drugs remain legal and available and some relatively safe drugs remain strictly controlled.

  For now online procurement of medications remains legal to the extent that there is some consultation and no narcotics sold online.