OK, remember a few months back when a few women in Massachusetts sued Wal-Mart for refusing to carry Plan B in their pharmacy even though there's a law that requires all commonly prescribed medications to be carried by any pharmacy?

Now that it is OTC, can they stop carrying it?

I don't care what viewpoint you have on the morality of the drug or of Wal-Mart, but I'm just wondering if they're allowed not to carry it because its not longer a prescription, which is all that law covers.

What do you think?

8/30/2006 10:40:36 AM

Personally, I think the law SHOULD allow wal-mart to carry any drug they want... or disclude any drug they want. Government interference at its finest.

8/30/2006 10:47:15 AM

I don't know the answer to your question, but something to keep in mind is that the drug must still be procured from a pharmacist in the pharmacy; not like Tylenol on the shelf in the aisles. So, that might make it different from other OTCs. Then again, it might not.

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 10:52 AM. Reason : It's a very interesting question though. I'd like to know the answer too.]

8/30/2006 10:52:18 AM

nm

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 10:59 AM. Reason : .]

8/30/2006 10:58:34 AM

Id rather have government interference than Wal-Mart interference in my life.

and as for the question I guess they dont. Lets hope they dont decide to pull robitussin because of all the meth addicts

8/30/2006 11:06:11 AM

i think with ANY drug...morning after pill...aspirin...whatever...the store should have the right to choose what it sells and doesnt...if walmart doesnt have a morning after pill, the girl should go to another store that does

8/30/2006 11:08:18 AM

^^ Really? If Wal-Mart refuses to sell you Plan B then go accross the street to WallGreens.

If the Government refuses to sell you Plan B then Go Fuck Yourself.

8/30/2006 11:51:36 AM

the government isnt refusing me Plan B tho. Its forcing Wal-Mart to carry it.

there is a fundamental difference between the government not allowing me to have something and then them making a company carry a product. Im not saying either is good but dont go flip flopping on me and shit/

8/30/2006 11:55:42 AM

I tell you what though. If we're forcing people to carry certain products, I want Sour Patch Kids mandated everywhere. Do you know what a bitch it is in some places to find them?

8/30/2006 12:20:28 PM

But it is the same principle. If it is right and proper for the Government to make everyone carry Plan B, it must be equally right and proper for the Government to make everyone NOT carry Plan B.

Now, owners that find the Plan B pill immoral have two options: Close the business or renounce their morals. It is a violation of the pharmacists rights to make it otherwise. You should not have a right to buy Plan B everywhere you shop.

Either way, I trust the pharmacists can find a way around this problem, either by being perpetually out of stock or charging remarkable prices to drive people to less conscientious sellers.

8/30/2006 1:00:18 PM

I always thought this problem was mainly due to people who have no means to goto another pharmacy. Thus arguments of "they can just shop elsewhere" do not address the point of the debate.

I believe that businesses should have the right to carry or not carry certain products based on the owners' own decisions.

However, Wal-Mart has now appeared as a special case. In many smaller rural towns, Wal-mart is the only pharmacy around for miles since their competitive and fiscally superior way of doing business has driven out all other small-town pharmacies.

Thus, in this special case, I find it acceptable for the government to mandate that they should be forced to carry this drug.

*I have no knowledge of the specific wording of that court case, I would suggest looking there for an answer to your particular question. If that cases' wording doesn't prevent Wal-Mart from not carrying the pill anymore, then I suspect they will attempt to not carry it again and fight another court battle over this new issue.

Sweeping, generalized ideas such that the government should not be infringing on private business have proven themselves as great ideas of capitalism. However, we should not become so stuck to these ideas as to not make exceptions to them in special cases such as this one. To make a law such that Wal-Mart must carry this pill is not going to change or affect the basic premise of the idea of limited government interferance in the private sector.

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 1:29 PM. Reason : No reason]

8/30/2006 1:26:46 PM

You only get remarks about "Big Brother" or Brave New World when its something that people dislike, like wiretaps.

People loved the rest of totalitarianism, like mandated birth control.

8/30/2006 1:27:12 PM

Well your statement then begs the question, "Do Corporations count as people?". It isn't really equivalent to say that a law infringing on a Corporation's rights is the same as a law infringing on a Person's rights.

Corporations (such as Wal-mart) don't currently have the same rights as priviledges afforded to them under our laws as people do (although their lawyers are slowly working to change that).

Government action such as wire-tapping infringes on the right of the individual directly, which can be easily construed as more harmful than infringing on a Corporation's rights.

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 1:33 PM. Reason : Once Government forces people to take Birth Control, then it becomes a problem]

8/30/2006 1:32:57 PM

Remember that corporations aren't people...but the owners of corporations ARE people.

And also, corporations may not be people, but you're forcing them to stock a certain product that someone who calls the shots disagrees with. It isn't like the corporation is refusing to carry it, it is someone who makes the decisions for that corporation. A human being, no doubt.

8/30/2006 1:36:47 PM

Well, your argument is very similiar to the ones that Corporations have been trying to use to get more rights for decades now. For the most part they have been successful in this endevour.

Unfortunatly, over the course of American History Corporations have been able to 'pick and choose' which rights of the individual they are entitled to. For instance, initially Corportations in this country were merely a specific group of people who entered into a contract to get a certain, limited, and well defined piece of work accomplished.

As the history of our country played out, Corporations obviously became more than they were initially during the early periods of our history. They won court battles to give them more rights of the individual, however they've also won court battles to make sure they are not exposed to the risk associated with making immoral decisions as an individual. They have become to be defined by our laws as something unique - they have certainly not been granted all the rights and behaviors mandated that come along with being an individual person.

Thus, there is no precident or law to make your claim that forcing Wal-Mart to carry a certain product is against the rights of the individual as defined in the Constitution and other founding documents. These decisions have to be decided on another basis other than simply labeling a Corporation as an individual. By stating (obviously) that a human being is behind the decision for a Corporation to carry or not carry a certain product does not logically entail that that Corporation is thus afforded the rights of an individual in this case.

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 1:59 PM. Reason : .]

8/30/2006 1:57:40 PM

I won't deny that you've got pretty good reasoning with this, but I disagree with some of it.
Perhaps we both need to wait to see some precedence set.

For instance

Quote :

"however they've also won court battles to make sure they are not exposed to the risk associated with making immoral decisions as an individual."

Can you elaborate? I thought the limited liability of a corporation provided this, which wasn't won in a court case (rather it was defined) unless I am mistaken

Otherwise, you have a pretty decent argument there, I will admit.

8/30/2006 2:04:22 PM

Well, it certainly has a huge hole in it since I wasn't really arguing against what you were saying, but as you pointed out I was arguing in essence that we have to have precedence set for this sort of thing. I also seemed to hint that my personal beliefs are that Corporations, in these limited and specific cases, should not have all the rights of the individual. Unfortunatly, I don't believe anyone on these boards has the legal knowledge to fully argue this case.

As far as I know (and I'm certainly not a legal scholar), most of the current rights of a Corporation were set forth with legal precedent as opposed to legislative declarations. I'm basing this mostly from history classes and personal books I've read which I don't have direct access to anymore (Most of those books are my fathers and still reside at his house and obviously I only have memory to go by in terms of class lessons).

However, there is a fairly good video documentary I watched awhile back which I can't seem to find on the site I originally ran across it. I'll try and locate it later and post a link in this thread. The documentary itself clearly does have an overall overtone of "Corporations are Bad" so I don't buy into many of their opinionated arguments. Luckily, about 80+% of the documentary is completely factual so it is really a worthwhile 30 minute investment.

8/30/2006 2:46:08 PM

Quote :

"Can you elaborate? I thought the limited liability of a corporation provided this, which wasn't won in a court case (rather it was defined) unless I am mistaken"

It was defined. The legislature of the state in which you incorporate grants the stock holders immunity from liability in exchange for 20+% of the company profits. It was not a requirement that such immunity be granted in the 19th century, but it has been on the books for over 150 years and it does not make corporations special, they are still all they ever were: a bunch of people that came together in the meeting of their minds to pursue a common goal. By granting immunity to corporations you are granting immunity to these individuals. By revoking the rights of corporations you are revoking the rights of these individuals.

There is nothing magical about them, a corporation is an imaginary simplification of what is really going on, a bunch of human beings have pooled their resources and agreed to work together.

Now, in all honesty, I believe this was a horrible deal the 19th century business community made. By having immunity granted to themselves by the state legislatures they also made themselves beholden to them. The act also took on a life of its own in the intellectual community which was now able to objectify corporations as inhuman, more machine than human and thus ripe for regulation.

And it was not necessary to do so, as techniques towards limited liability already existed in the common-law tradition of contracts. It was believed at the time that by making the limited liability explicit it would engender efficiency, which it did, but at the high price of losing their souls (since corporations and their owners are no longer individuals with rights).

8/30/2006 2:49:50 PM

Well, here this might shed some light (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation):

This breifly seems to support the notion of what early corporations were like in this Country:

Quote :

"Early corporations of the commercial sort were formed under frameworks set up by governments of states to undertake tasks which appeared too risky or too expensive for individuals or governments to embark upon. ... In the United States, government chartering began to fall out of vogue in the mid-1800s. Corporate law at the time was focused on protection of the public interest, and not on the interests of corporate shareholders. Corporate charters were closely regulated by the states. Forming a corporation usually required an act of legislature. Investors generally had to be given an equal say in corporate governance, and corporations were required to comply with the purposes expressed in their charters."

On Limited Liability:

Quote :

"Limited Liability Unlike in a partnership or sole proprietorship, members of a corporation hold no liability for the corporation's debts and obligations: see leading case in common law, Salomon v. Salomon & Co. [1897] AC 22. As a result their "limited" potential losses cannot exceed the amount which they contributed to the corporation as dues or paid for shares. The economic rationale for this lies in the fact that it allows anonymous trading in the shares of the corporation by virtue of eliminating the corporation's creditors as a stakeholder in such a transaction. Without limited liability, a creditor would not likely allow any share to be sold to a buyer of at least equivalent creditworthiness as the seller. Limited liability further allows corporations to raise funds for riskier enterprises by removing risks and costs from the owners and shifting them onto creditors and to other members of society, thereby creating an externality. Another rationale sometimes offered for limited liability is reducing the amount that an investor can lose reduces the time and effort required to determine whether a stock is risky, thus adding liquidity to the stock market - in contrast to the very illiquid market for partnership interests (however, given the due diligence already exercised by institutional and other large investors, and the availability of insurance, it is questionable whether added liability would increase the costs of determining risk sufficiently to impair the liquidity of the stock market). In any event, a lender or other creditor can require a personal guarantee on a loan to a corporation (normally a small corporation), thus introducing personal liability."

On another note, although I couldn't find a web-link to that video, I did find it mentioned on Wikipedia:

Quote :

"For a history of corporations that is “pro-corporate”, see John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: a Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (New York: Modern Library, 2003). For a history of corporations that is “critical”, see Joel Bakan, The Corporation. The pathological pursuit of profit and power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004)."

As you can imagine based on my description of it, it is what is labeled as the "critical" video. I'm thinking about trying to find the "pro-corporate" video to watch at some point now.

8/30/2006 2:55:47 PM

^^ As usual, Loneshark shows up and proves to me he knows much more about history than I ever will.

[Edited on August 30, 2006 at 3:04 PM. Reason : Wikipedia elaborates more on the legislative vs. judicial history of Corporations]

8/30/2006 2:57:12 PM

i gotta start reading more so I at least seem like i know wtf is going on.

DAMN YOU LONESHARK!!!!!!!!!

8/30/2006 3:47:15 PM