Allergy Medicines Suck

So I've been fighting some kind of cold/flu/allergy thing for what seems like the millionth time this year and it's only March, and my doctor believes that I get this histamine kind of reaction- maybe a cold, then the reaction, maybe allergies that feel a lot like a cold, neither of us know for sure. He suggested, based on his own personal experience which seemed similar to him, a combination of an inhaler thingy to use once a day, which is usually prescribed for asthma; a pill used for seasonal allergy sufferers, and a capsule which is supposed to help chronic coughs. This is in addition to the other meds I take for a couple of typical middle-aged things. I hate pills. They annoy me. Seems to me that for every pill that's supposed to fix something, they create other issues from side effects, which are solved by- you guessed it- another pill.

Now, I'm sure EVERYONE knows that Claritin, for instance, has been shown to be effective for only 30% of the population, yet it's one of the most frequently prescribed allergy meds. Did you really know that only 1/3 of people are actually helped by this drug if you already take it? Do you know if it helps you at all or not? Do they mention this fact at any point during their television commercial? That seems like a pretty low chance that this would work, doesn't it? Doesn't it make you mad? I don't take Claritin, but someone once prescribed it for me a long time ago, and it did nothing for me, so I stopped. What really made me mad was that this is only one drug of many. How many others have been studied and found to be mostly ineffective, and yet get prescribed all the time?

Meanwhile, I was reading the literature that comes with one of the meds for this cold/allergy/histamine thing I've got. Keep in mind that it's for a cough, sinus inflammation in my eyes, nasal passages, laryngitis, etc. So what are the common side effects listed for one of the pills? Oh, and I've been popping antacids all week. Here's a direct quote from the manufacturer's literature: "the most common side effects include stomach pain, stomach or intestinal upset, heartburn, tiredness, fever, stuffy nose, cough, flu, upper respiratory infection, dizziness, headache..."

So how do you know if this stuff is treating the above symptoms or causing them or both? That's the symptoms we were trying to fix! Nowhere on the literature do they state what the effectiveness rate has been, and the drug companies are not required by law to do so. Why the heck not? I know why the drug companies wouldn't want to, but why are they allowed by the FDA ? If you knew that a medicine your doctor wanted to give you only had a 30% chance of helping you or less, would you think it was worth it? Would he or she prescibe it as often or tell you this before you tried it? Of course, you could be one of the few people who are actually helped by it. Personally, I'd rather know, decide if it's worth trying anyway, then decide if it seemed to help or not. What worries me is that there are actual statistics about the rate at which drugs are prescribed by doctors, and the more frequently they visit doctors with samples and giveaways, the more likely the doctor is to prescribe it. Big surprise, huh? The thing is, it's complicated, because people who can't afford to pay for the drugs because they don't have prescription drug coverage on their health insurance, or don't have insurance at all because they can't afford THAT, can only get the drugs from their docs as samples.

So here are all these drug company salesmen, getting seriously nice salaries, giving out lots of drug samples, toys and gifts, maybe even buying lunch for all the doctor's offices they visit, then there are the prime time tv commercials advertising the drugs. How much do you think the salaries, samples, and tv commercials cost? The drug companies say that we, the American public, which is being charged the most for their drugs, are absorbing the cost of research, but a lot of that research has been financed, partially or fully, by the U.S. government. And only the most profitable drugs end up on the shelves. Frequently, it's more likely that a Prilosec, for instance, gets tweaked a little and becomes Nexium, which is exactly the same thing except for one molecule which doesn't change the medicine at all. How much research did THAT take? Things that people don't have to take repeatedly over long periods of time- well, they're not that interested in developing those, are they?

So if we're being charged so much for drugs that many of us can't afford them, and if the government is funding the research that the drug companies say they're charging the American public for, why isn't our government insisting, like other countries, that we'll only pay so much for the drugs and no more, and why isn't the same government insisting on full disclosure of studies regarding those drugs which explore the efficacy and side effects of those drugs?