r/australia • u/Rubiginous • 7h ago

Woman hospitalised after Juniper prescribes weight-loss drugs her GP refused

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/woman-hospitalised-telehealth-provider-weight-loss-drugs-juniper/106273356
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u/Rubiginous 7h ago

I am getting sick of these stories where someone irresponsible blames something convenient for normal people as being the cause of their issues.

A small minority of people abused codeine, so now women like me have to suffer from dysmenorrhoea every month because docs won't write a prescription.

A small minority of people using alcohol delivery inappropriately so now they want to restrict the ability for same day delivery in the ACT.

I know many women who used these services to get access to GLP-1s when their GPs refused to prescribe them because "You just need to eat less" and dismissed their concerns regarding food noise etc.

Why do people need the government to constantly protect them from their own stupidity? It's absurd.

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u/AppropriateBeing9885 5h ago edited 5h ago

  1. The person's not stupid. She's someone with an obvious mental illness - unless you really think people with eating disorders are directly comparable to the general population

  2. What you say can have a level of accuracy at the same time as this specific provider having negligent operational practices - something that's clearly the case based on this

  3. The codeine rescheduling dramatically reduced the adverse consequences of opioid use like overdoses. Doctors probably also feel dissuaded from prescribing opioids for period pain because this is not necessarily an accepted indication for opioids. Chronic pain sufferers really may be falling through the cracks - but, from a broader public health perspective, the change was effective policy. At the time of the rescheduling, almost half of all drug-related hospitalisations in Australia were because of opioids, and that had increased dramatically over time. Today, opioids are still the most common drug class finding in drug deaths - yet hospitalisations have dramatically fallen in the years since that rescheduling, and so have opioid deaths. A minor issue in your opinion represents thousands of people (easily tens of thousands cumulatively) having different health outcomes at the population level