The AMA reports that noncompliance with regard to prescription medication is the cause of excessive hospitalization, morbidity, mortality, and overall healthcare costs. The article fails to address those patients who suffer from adverse drug events and their related costs. They state that health costs go up about $300 billion annually because of drug noncompliance, but fail to acknowledge that there is also about the same amount of money spent dealing with adverse drug events!
Sadly, there is no good data comparing the benefits and adverse outcomes from using pharmaceutical drugs across the board. We have simply assumed that the benefits outweigh the problems related to drug treatments. There is no doubt that for certain situations there are tremendous benefits from pharmaceutical drugs. There is also no doubt that for other situations there is more harm than good. We need to take a careful look at this problem through clinical trials.
