The opioid crisis exposed how well-intentioned care, shaped by misaligned incentives, can cause widespread harm. A similar pattern is now emerging with antidepressants.
The opioid crisis has taught us the lesson that well-intentioned medicine, when paired with misaligned incentives, can produce devastating public health outcomes. What was introduced in the 1990s as revolutionary pain prescriptions, turned out to become a health epidemic catalyzed by large pharmaceutical companies selling a product in which there was direct knowledge that long-term usage led to difficulties in patients withdrawing. Prescribing physicians contributed to the epidemic not out of greed or malintent, but sympathy. A place of…
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CRG explores the third major shift in American healthcare — from physician authority to institutional control, and now toward consumer empowerment. As out-of-pocket costs rise, trust in traditional systems erodes, and personal health data proliferates, individuals are increasingly directing their own care.