Future Predictions

Madame Tasty has peered into her crystal ball and will let you in on a few of the mystic secrets that have appeared.....

Soon all brand name drugs will require prior authorization coverage on all insurances. The resulting phone and fax volumes required to send requests and file forms will short out all telecommunications systems resulting in a resurgence of HAM radio, Morse code, and "snail" mail being the only source of communication for the ensuing 20 years it takes to rebuild the telecommunication infrastructure. Blogs will be on a "snail" mail subscription service which will suck. On the up-side, the postal service and telecommunications repair will supply jobs to all the autoworkers who will be unemployed shortly.

Co-pays will triple while provider reimbursement halves. This will result in 90% of prescriptions going through mail order services to cut costs and drastically change retail pharmacy as we know it. Again, more jobs for the postal service.

The price of insulin will skyrocket when e. coli form a union and demand employee benefits for insulin production. This will result in many diabetics ending up on welfare to afford their life-saving medications.

The ghost of Elvis Presley will haunt all responsible for taking his song "Viva Las Vegas" and tainting it for advertising with "Viva Viagra." For shame!

Wal-Mart's $4 drug prices will be the final nail in the coffin of "Mom and Pop" pharmacies everywhere. It will be a sad day for pharmacy with such price perversion subverting everything "free enterprise" and "family owned and operated" business stands for.

The once mighty Rite-Aid will fall in the woods and be devoured by hungry bears named CVS and WAG. It will be a grizzly splatter-kill of a mess that will become a made for Lifetime after school special called "When Business Attacks"...for shame!

By 2012 the intermingling of HIV genotypes from orgy parties, random bar tricks, IV needle sharing, and prostitution will mutate to resist all current drug regimens....plague anyone?

Due to the ever rising popularity and overuse of hand sanitizers and antibacterial cleansers in all environments MRSA will shoot up onto the list of top 10 causes of death in humans.

Someone else besides me will read the ingredients on a package of cotto salami and realize it is the turkey hearts that make it so damn delicious.

By 2012 all bacteria will be resistant to azithromycin due to patients insisting on taking it every time they get a sniffle or stuffy nose and the prescribers who cave in to the patients' whims and give z-paks with refills. Why don't people ever learn that allergies and viruses cannot be cured with antibiotics and a Nettie pot????

A food manufacturer will develop "Snacks" and "Meals" under the guidance of a secret consultant (you will know who if you have read the Gaiman/Pratchett novel Good Omens) so that anorexia and malnutrition will be the wave of the future.

"Pac-Man Fever" will be cured with a classic arcade and a pocket full of quarters.

Retail torture will continue as Hall and Oates songs will still be in heavy rotation on the muzak permanently. AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Patients will mistakenly listen to people in the aisles instead of health care professionals when choosing an OTC treatment resulting in many deaths and hospital visits. Oh wait, that happens now so that one is already true. Damn, I am good!

My corporate paymasters will use many of my previous posts as a reason to force me into leaving the company quietly under threat of a major libel suit. With secret identity compromised I will admit defeat and move on to a career change that will lead me to a dream job at Gamestop where I will spend my days recommending games to the "hard core" and playing all day long. I will become the pot smoking slacker princess I always knew I could be.

THE FUTURE ROCKS!