You know what would really be great, and would almost certainly save money? If prescriptions could be done electronically. I am amazed by what it is like to get a prescription medicine, especially Schedule II -- the doctor types a lot into a computer, then puts special paper into a printer, prints it, hands it to me (and now we will just assume I cannot figure out how to copy it), then I walk to the pharmacy and what happens? They look at the paper, type more things, and then I get to wait 15 minutes for the medicine to be dispensed.
Now, what if instead, my doctor would type in the information, and then either (a) prints a QR code that I can just bring to the pharmacy or (b) asks if I will be using the same pharmacy as last time, and has the prescription sent their automatically, so it is waiting for me when I arrive? Let each doctor's office create a prescription record in some database, and let each pharmacy update that database when the prescription is filled -- why rely on copy-evident paper, when we can rely on computers instead? We could even connect this to an EMR system, so that doctors not only know what a patient was prescribed, but whether or not the prescription was actually filled (when I was last prescribed an opiate painkiller, I never filled the prescription; yet my followup appointment involved the receptionist printing a sheet that showed the prescription, with no indication one way or the other if I had bothered with it).
I understand that regulations and so forth and probably the doom of these ideas. Still, it would be nice to get something a little better than the ludicrous anachronism we have today.