As reported by statista.com, "The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that prescription drug expenditure in the United States came to some 333 billion U.S. dollars in 2017." To put this absolutely staggering sum of monies into perspective, statista.com, estimates that in 1960, a total of only 2.7 billion dollars was spent on prescription drugs, and in 1980, that total was just 12 billion dollars. Further, as reported by statista.com, the United States, "… spent 17.9 percent of its gross domestic product on health care in 2017," as compared to only 5 percent in 1960, and just 8.9 percent in 1980.
This staggering increase in prescription drugs expenditures along with the corresponding massive increase in the percentage of monies spent on health care within America's gross domestic product, is quite clearly a crisis on a number of levels. It must be said, it would be one thing if all this prescription drug usage in America was somehow miraculously resolving health issues and problems in America, but the fact of the matter is, that the United States is an exceedingly unhealthy nation in comparison to other western nations, therefore signifying that all of this prescription drug usage isn't actually being of real material benefit. Additionally, no other western nation spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product on health care; yet, the end result signifies that America's health is worse in aggregate than those other western nations.
When it comes to health care in America, there are fundamental flaws with the orthodoxy as practiced in America, which somehow believes that the more prescription drugs that are prescribed and thereby are utilized by patients, the better off those patients will be. This presupposes the fallacy that prescription drugs, in and of themselves, somehow are able to make people healthier, but the results clearly prove the very opposite. What America fails to admit via its insane amount of prescription pills so prescribed, is that the whole physical body as well as its psyche is more complex than the medical profession wishes to recognize, and that therefore to believe that there somehow is a pill that will resolve, correct, and ameliorate every illness so diagnosed is a false premise.
In point of fact, the foods that people eat, the exercises that people participate in, the stress levels that people deal with, as well as the living conditions and income of people are all salient factors in the overall health of a given person. This thus means that to believe that for every problem the solution is some sort of prescription medicine is knowingly false. No doubt, prescription drugs can be and have been of benefit for certain patients and specific illnesses, but they are not now, nor should they ever have been, considered to be something more than a conceivable aid for people experiencing some sort of health issue.
Further to the point, not every illness or discomfort, necessitates a prescription drug; for the body as a whole, is remarkable in being able to repair and heal itself, given enough time, rest, adjustment, cleanliness, and care. Additionally, the fact that the prescription drug business is a for-profit business, greatly lends itself for those companies to have a material need to increase their sales, as well as to protect and/or to augment their pricing structure for the benefit of growing the profits of that corporate pharmaceutical industry. If, this country, through its government and its people, will not stop and make a thorough and comprehensive review of what exactly is going on and how much this has gone horribly wrong, then this will literally become a country drowning in prescription drugs, to the overall detriment to the health and financial well being of its population as a whole.