Maybe I’m missing something, but discussions on the cost of medicine never seem to question whether using prescription drugs is the right choice to begin with.

IMO, it would be far preferable to treat pharmaceuticals as a last resort, focusing instead on preventative medicine and addressing the underlying social issues that cause the medicine to be prescribed in the first place. From the article:

Hep C kills more people in the United States than all other infectious diseases combined. Cases are soaring, largely caused by injection of heroin and opiates; it’s a blood-borne virus spread by sharing needles.

Surely the solution to this epidemic is to address the underlying drug problems first?

Edit: I’m not suggesting that the treatments be ignored or that people who already have the disease aren’t helped. But rather that if X disease has an increase in cases, the only solution shouldn’t be to treat it - it should also be to figure out why it’s increasing and then try to prevent it.