Big Pharma Has Turned Us Into Hypochondriacs

[GoLeft TV]

The United States is one of only two countries in the world that allows drug companies to market their products directly to consumers.

For the last 18 years, our TV airwaves have been dominated by commercials telling us that if we feel sad, if we feel sick, if we feel anything at all – then we need to take a magic pill from Big Pharma to make all of our worries melt away. A magic pill, by the way, that has been marked up by as much as twenty thousand percent.

Direct to consumer advertising has been a huge cash cow for the drug industry. Drug companies in the U.S. are now pulling in around $300 billion dollars every year, and this massive haul is all thanks to their marketing. 20 percent of the country now takes at least 5 prescription drugs per month.

[Xipe Totec]

1. There's a pill for that too. nt

[valerief]

2. Decades ago, people would get angry with me when they could see I had a cold and

when they asked what I was taking for it I said nothing. Angry. Really. I never found cold meds to help so I just didn't take them. My colds went away as they always did.

I can't remember the last time I had a cold. Maybe 20 years.

[pipoman]

3. Sounds right...until the list of side effects

Bone cancer, immune suppression, suicidal thoughts and chronic splitting migraines are the side effects of the restless leg syndrome pills....nah, I'll live with night leg twitch....

[TryLogic]

4. Like organized crime

If organized crime created a health care system, what would it look like? How would it work?

People would have to pay for protection -- call it insurance.

People would be steered into taking drugs that are difficult to stop taking. Once started in drugs (called medicines), they would gradually find themselves taking more and more drugs they could not stop taking.

People would be charged very high prices for necessary medical help such important tests and procedures. Prices for many medicines would be outrageously high.

The crime bosses would buy and otherwise influence politicians who would then protect them and their profiteering.

Honest doctors would be pressured into helping the mob maximize profits, for example, by not mentioning alternative procedures that would have to be performed elsewhere, or by selling the more expensive surgical procedures and tests that need not be done, and by scaring patients into getting such procedures.

There would be rampant advertising by drug companies to brain wash naive citizens into asking for various drugs that would supposedly provide magical benefits.