Over Medicated Essay

Last year, pharmacist filled 4,468,929,929 prescriptions in the United States that is an 85 percent increase from just twenty years earlier (Carr, Rabkin, and Skinner 38). With these kinds of numbers, it must be obvious the process to develop drugs in America is working like a well-oiled machine, or is it? Prescription drug companies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and independent research companies including universities all work together to develop improved medications. Each one has an unbiased, independent role to play in the process, however, over the years the unbiased independent part has become blurred. The Federal Government has made changes to regulations and health care policies, consequently, the prescription drug company’s …show more content…
So, it can be derived, in the statement “Americans are overmedicated”, Americans are taking too may medications that are not doing their prescribed job. Conversely, if Americans were effectively medicated, it can be assumed the medications are doing the job they were developed for. This is the question that needs to be answered, are Americans overmedicated or are they effectively medicated? When compared to the dollars spent on health care the United States has the worst mortality rate of all other civilized countries (Lavigne 1414). In the United States the leading cause of death is heart disease among adults (Byrne et. al. 800). This has been partially attributed to high cholesterol levels in adults; the leading prescription drug in therapeutic category taken in adults over the age of 40 is statins used to lower cholesterol (Cardon and Showalter 5436). This is only one example of the drugs being prescribed in the United States that have no improved our overall health standing. If the drugs taken in America are not doing the job correctly then it can only be assumed we are