Big Pharma seems to think that $1.00 to $4.00 is a fair price for a pill. My doctor prescribed Lipitor for me, and gave me blood tests four times per year. When a test indicated a potential liver problem, he switched me to Tricor, a non-statin. I am opposed to the American mania for making all drugs available only by prescription, as this normally only makes them vastly more expensive.
I am taking a generic type of Lasix, and a Potassium Chloride pill to make up for Potassium depletion. Several years ago, they sold Potassium Chloride in the supermarket as a salt substitute, and a bottle of the stuff cost about as much as four of these outrageously expensive KCl tablets. Potassium Chloride is not any sort of wonder drug, nor does it require any great deal of research, but it isn't available in the US without a prescription.
All I really need to do to get the same doseage of KCL is to eat one banana. I am sure that somewhere in the Pharma induistry or the FDA there are people who would like to turn bananas into a prescription drug.
In France, Spain, Mexico and Argentina, all the pills I take are available at any pharmacy with no Rx required. It does say on the bottle that they are sold with a prescription only, but the pharmacist will only look at the Rx and hand it back to you if you bring it, and will sell all these pills with no Rx at all, at aboiut a quarter the price we have to pay in the USA. We are being diddled bigtime, and 9it would not be difficult at all to determine if selling pills the European way would actually cause more people to get sick or die.
The problem there is that people might overdose. The problem here is that people will not buy the things at all because they can't afford them.
The description of the drugs and the counterindications and side effects could be rephrased so that anyone (well, most people) could understand them and most Rx drugs could be sold over the counter.
