Why does publix have free antibiotics

Find practical advice on saving money on groceries, travel and shopping, plus tips from our experts on how to live the good life for less at Living on the Cheap. Before you buy medications, see if you can get them for free. Comments Vic Ros May 3, at pm. Melina May 3, at pm. Quick Links Thing to Do. Food and Drink. Business Directory. Restaurant Directory. Events Calendar. Times staff writer Nina Kim and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Madhusmita Bora can be reached at mbora sptimes.

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Published Aug. Florida ordered 90, child vaccine doses. What's wrong with offering consumers free drugs? After all, many people, particularly people without insurance, have a hard time paying for prescription drugs. So free drugs will help them, won't they? It is true that free or discounted prescriptions can help patients, particularly the uninsured and low-income.

But there is something peculiar and potentially disturbing about Publix's move: The selection of antibiotics as the drugs to be offered for free. Antibiotics are typically used for short periods of time to treat acute infections.

Unfortunately, antibiotics are also massively overprescribed, which leads to the increase in infections which are resistant to common antibiotics. See this June Denver Post article for more on the dangers of that resistance The Palm Beach Post raised this concern in its article on the announcement:.

Some public health officials have raised concerns about increasing use of some antibiotics because their overuse causes them to become less effective as the bacteria they target develop immunity. The Publix initiative might contribute to that if doctors were to respond by increasing the number of prescriptions they write for the particular antibiotics the company is offering for free, said Lisa McGiffert, a health policy analyst for the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which has raised some concerns about antibiotic resistance.

Will the fact that antibiotics are available for free at Publix cause doctors to prescribe more of them? Perhaps not. But there is still widespread inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics by physicians and nurse practitioners , often prodded by patient demands.