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America Needs to Kick its Colossal Prescription Drug Habit
The world leader in drug prescriptions, by far, must prescribe less and “deprescribe” more, experts say
Overprescription of drugs and the ongoing use of unnecessary and harmful medications is out of control in the United States, the world’s top pill-popping country by far. Americans spend some $603 billion on prescription drugs each year, estimated at roughly 48% of the entire global market.
The vast majority of U.S. adults 50 and older use prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications and supplements on a regular basis — with an alarming number relying on several at once. Meanwhile, prescription drug abuse among teens is rising.
If you hadn’t heard the word before, now you know: America has a vast, seemingly intractable healthcare problem experts call “polypharmacy,” the use of multiple drugs at once to treat one or more conditions.
While acknowledging that many medications are vital and irreplaceable when properly prescribed, an emerging movement among doctors, researchers and pharmacists encourages everyone involved to consider “deprescribing” medications that should never have been prescribed, or are no longer necessary for a given person, and in many cases violate a physician’s Hippocratic…
