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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (381425)	4/30/2008 1:25:19 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1574098

David, I agree with what you say, but it is my opinion that drugs are way too overprescribed by doctors these days. This is almost by design, since doctors rarely have any time to spend with their patients and figure out what's going on. It's just way too easy to prescribe something for the patient. Well, there are really tough issues these docs have to deal with -- but the drugs are the principal means of treating the patient's problem, so they kind of have to do it. I do think there are situations where older generics could be used but the drug companies have done sales jobs on both the public and the physicians. So, rather than prescribing the Prozac they go straight for the Zoloft. Patients don't know any better, so they're going to take whatever the doc prescribes. But lots of patients, if they would say, "Hey, I'd like to try something less expensive first" could do so. But the docs are totally unaware of the cost of the drugs they're prescribing. I do think these are areas where our healthcare system can be improved. If someone were to set out to train physicians on ordering the least expensive drug that would do the job, to not be so quick to order expensive imaging, etc., there could be savings. OTOH, many years ago in the midst of tax season, I visited my doctor with some kind of URI or something. He said, "I've got a new antibiotic that may knock it out but it is $160/injection." I bitched about it, and he said, "How much is it going to cost you to miss a week of tax season?" That was the end of that. I paid the $160 and was happy to do it.