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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (4229)	2/4/2008 12:40:12 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

John, Imagine the chaos if you put the FDA out of business and eliminated all regulation? If any drug company could bring any drug to market... welcome to the good old days of snake oil salesmen. I wasn't suggesting FDA to be eliminated, but now that you bring it up, it may not as terrible as it seems. Before I explain why, let me just state my opinion that overwhelming majority of drugs prescribed don't help and in fact do more harm than good. Based on this opinion, I think that the less drugs prescribed the better. Currently, there is a confidence on part of patients and doctors that the drugs are safe and effective. People consume drugs like M&Ms, assuming they are silver bullets curing diseases keeping them healthy. Why not, the drugs have the government stamp of approval. The government stamp of approval boosts the sales of drugs. Without FDA, drug companies would be perceived for what they really are - charlatans pushing snake oils - that may or may not help. The drug sales would drop significantly. Let's go on with this hypothesis: Currently people think that they don't have to take responsibility for their own healh. If they screw up, there are always all these government approved silver bullets that will instantly remedy decades of unhealthy lifestyle, acting as a safety net. If it is revealed that there is no safety net, people may modify their behaviour. As I said, above is just a "no FDA" hypothesis. With FDA in place, I would make it a more difficult to approve new drugs, so that there are fewer disasters like we have had recently. Joe