The American health care rule for prescription drugs is generally: Ask (or just go online) and ye shall receive.
But with an economic meltdown comes serious resource reallocation, and lost jobs and slashed earnings/net worths mean less money to pay for all those Trazodone and Ativan refills. Consequently, as the New York Times reports, consumers are cutting back on prescription drug use in an effort to curb spending. And the effects are already hitting drug companies: Pfizer says that sales of Lipitor, the world’s largest-selling prescription med, has seen sales drop 13 percent in the third quarter, and Merck just announced it’s slashing 7,200 jobs.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons why this is bad:
