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Comment by iteria | Hacker News Reader

It's good in that people have better quality of life. Almost every adult over 50 I know is on a medication and all of it is to reducing suffering. Blood pressure control, pain management, treatment of chronic diseases that used to be crippling

I just started a medication for a disease that was just an unlucky roll of the genetic die. Before, my options would have been to just slow decline until I died for a decade. Now. I'll take this for the next 40 or more years of my life. I imagine that was a lot of people before we started having a lot of medicines. Diabetes used to be a death sentence a century ago after all.

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There is a real risk in assuming that prescriptions, rather than access to medications, means a person has a higher quality of life.

That is absolutely true for some, but for some of the most common medications the underlying conditions themselves may be avoidable. Being able to get prescription drugs for short term ailments is extremely beneficial, but short of a truly permanent condition I have to assume quality of life would be better if the drug wasn't deemed medically necessary (meaning it actually wasn't needed, not trying to parse medical diagnoses).

You are doing the weird thing where you think you are parsing reality differently and better than other people.

No one is arguing that all prescriptions are the best solution to all problems.

> No one is arguing that all prescriptions are the best solution to all problems.

You may have misread my comment, I wasn't arguing against this at all. I was raising that assuming a majority of Americans being prescribed to at least one pharmaceutical isn't really a sign of a higher quality of life.

It's good in that people have better quality of life. isn't saying that it's good people are on prescriptions, it's getting at the fact that most people taking a prescriptions are doing so because it improves their life.

Your comment sort of needs the assumption that the other poster thinks they are the best solution to all problems and directly indicate quality of life (rather than representing an improvement to quality of life for people on them).

A better quality of life is certainly what we want. I'm glad you found a good solution to your condition.

What is still wild to me is that so many people in that age range would suffer without drugs. I would expect more conditions to crop up as people mature but not this soon at this rate.

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