Opinion: Overprescribed: High cost isn’t America’s only drug problem
Doctors, their patients, lawmakers, and others need to talking about seniors' increasing use of multiple prescription medications, which harms millions of Americans each year.
The pharmaceutical industry has followed a brilliant two-pronged strategy to maximize its profits: raise prices and increase consumption of medications.
Most of the attention has focused on just one side of the equation — prices. With politicians and advocates on both sides of the aisle vowing to lower drug prices, few people are talking about Americans being overprescribed medications, which not only adds to the cost of drugs but also harms millions of Americans each year.
The number of Americans taking multiple medications has grown rapidly over the last two decades. Between 2000 and 2012, the proportion of adults in the U.S. who were taking five or more medications nearly doubled, from 8.2
