The issue isn't masking it with prescription drugs. It is much larger than that. The problem is we are beholden to medical services as businesses first and foremost. This means highest price and lowest cost is the mantra. Hence $500 single doses of Tylenol pills. And this is a business model that is truly an oligopoly, since we have very little choice in healthcare that isn't prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Americans. Couple this with out of control litigation and the costs are astronomical compared to almost any other developed nation. The last time this was analyzed by the WHO, we ranked just below Iran, iirc, in overall health care system. We subsidize the rest of the world by allowing pharma companies to maintain their patents far longer than other nations allow and we do nothing to control prescription drug expenses. In Germany, for example, price for prescriptions drugs had to follow a set of criteria to avoid the insane markups we see here of 1000% or more on some drugs. Since we have no such controls, we pay far and away the most out of pocket of any developed nation, which subsidizes the expenses in other countries, and bolsters record profit margins for pharma companies. And pharmaceuiticals is only one area in which we lag behind the rest of the world. We lag behind in nearly every other measure of a functioning healthcare system, including basic access to medical care, wait times, and even quality of outcome, and far and away the most lawsuits related to health care. We have done nothing to improve our health care system beyond bolstering profits for the businesses involved, at the extreme expense of the patients, who are just their customers.
Yes we need to do a lot more than just prescribe medication. I saw this personally with my wife who had always had hip pain our entire marriage, and in the states, even after she had lost 75 pounds, she was told it was a weight issue and they looked no further. Once we moved to Germany they had her in for an MRI within 4 days, and then an appointment with a specialist within 4 days after that, then physical therapy within 5 days after that, as they diagnosed hip dysplasia which should have been diagnoses here decades before. And the physical therapy worked, her pain was largely ameliorated. Then we move back here and her doctors scoff at what the germans told us. Surely they can't know modern medicine, right? PT here was largely ineffective as it focused on heat and minor stretching and wasn't geared toward dealing with HD the way we experienced in Germany. She went through gastric bypass and has since lost over 100 pounds. And a couple of months ago we had an MRI for her hip, after a 6 month wait. And then it took 6 weeks to get back into the specialist. For them to finally admit, hey there is hip dysplasia here. No ****? Then the PT she got was mostly just hot compresses and very little actual manipulation because it was as if the doctors and PT didn't know what to do for that condition. They treated it merely as bursitis, which is a symptom but not the underlying cause, oh and with prescriptions for muscle relaxants, of course. Here is the kicker: total cost for the treatment in Germany, incl. PT = about €200, maybe €750 if you factor in the overall cost of healthcare coverage, as in premiums out of my paycheck. Total cost here? Well in excess of $4000 (our basic deductible plus coinsurance after it was met), and that does NOT include premiums.
So a lot higher cost for worse care and far longer wait times. That is the problem we are facing in this country. Add far less availability on top of that and the over-use of prescription drugs itself is merely a symptom of a broken system. It is way bigger than that.