Have American drugs companies gotten out of hand?

Are they controlling the way that medicine is practice? Is every patient waiting for that super pill to make them healthy?
Answers:
American medicine before the invention of Penicillin was mainly nutrition. Working at a hospital I see medicine pushed by drug reps. Some of these medicines are based on the idea of the sugar pill. If you believe it will work it will. Here is a classic senario for you that happens all the time at the hospital. A elderly patient comes in with a cold or a cough. Instead of doing cultures and finding what is the best drug for them they give a broad spectrum antibiotic such as rocephin. This knocks out their normal flora of bacteria in their intestines giving room for C. Diff. to become the predominate bacteria. This causes diahreah and the patient comes back for dehydration and feeling really sick because of this bacteria. Vancomyacin is then prescribed to knock out C. Diff. It does to an extent but then your normal flora of E. Coli end up mutating to Vanc Resistant Ecoli. This is not a neccessarily a bad thing since it is not a problem while it stays in the intestines. But by this time the antibiotics have caused yeast infections such as thrush and what not and you are very sick. The doctor ends up having the patient cathiterized and they develope an Urinary Tract infection with the VRE. They then develope Sepsis and end up dying. The catch 22 is that if they had not been prescribed the Rocephin this would not have happened, but the drug companies have come up with a "List" of drugs that should be given to any patient presenting to the hospital with any symptoms of pneumonia, such as a cough. It is called "core measures". If they don't prescribe these medicines they are looked down upon by the hospital AND drug companies even though these can ultimately end up killing the patient.

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In an answer. YES
"Follow the money"

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It's like this, wouldn't you charge the most you could get for something you made. Gasoline %26 stamps are just two items that will keep going up as people continue to use them and pay for them at that price. So that said, Yes they are in control because people need and pay for the products. They will continue giving doctors subsides. The MONEY talks. Doctors will continue pushing pills. Due to the costs of malpractic insurance and goverment taxes, doctors need more money to up keep there way of life. Instead of cuting back there expences, they for sake there morals and prescribe a pill for everthing. So, yes patients have been trained to believe that a pill will solve all ills and I can not remember when was the last time I was just prescribed to stay home and rest. Due to this fact, antibotics are getting stronger and less effective.

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Drug companies Are Definitely OUT OF HAND! They advertise on tv likes it's a candy. It is sickening. They are controlling the way medicine is practiced by being involved in the government, buying out the medical colleges and trying to put out of business all the small doctors that still believe in natural healing first- the doctors that tell you to eat an apple, etc.
People have gotten lazy and think that medicine will heal them, when in fact it doesn't. It is much easier to pop apill then to change the way you live. Usually once you start depending on 1 pill you need another pill and another, etc. It is all about how you eat and how you live, excercise, etc. But this is too hard for us, some of us unfortunately are lazy.
We have gotten spoiled and don't remember that food actually comes from nature and not the food store and that health comes from how we treat %26 respect our bodies not taking medicine that later on is being pulled b/c they now did extra testing and realized the medicine is not good.

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