Word: careful
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...upon the power of expectations. Not surprisingly, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is familiar with the concept. In 2004, it spent $23 billion on marketing, crafting an image of safety, health, and well-being through television and print ads as well as the aggressive pursuit of trusted doctors and health-care professionals. Indeed, the positive effects of many modern medical treatments including cough medicines, antibiotics in the case of some infections, and the majority of back and arthroscopic surgeries have been proven to be the result of culturally ingrained expectations of their usefulness. Not one of the listed treatments beats...
...antibiotics aren’t doing anything a sugar pill couldn’t do. Doctors perform over 600,000 back surgeries a year to the tune of $20 billion. Surely some of the savings from eliminating back surgeries alone could go a long way toward funding health-care reform. This idea gains even more traction when you consider that, if subjected to the FDA approval process right now, back surgeries and any number of prescription or over-the-counter drugs would be summarily dismissed as failing to outperform the placebo level...
What the growing placebo effect shows is not so much the failure of modern medicine as much as the success of the modern production of beliefs. The modern health-care narrative is so firmly entrenched that it needs no introduction. You are sick; you visit the doctor; he diagnoses the illness; he prescribes the appropriate medication; you get better. Often this process, and not the actual treatment, cures us with its normality. This is why 55 percent of Chicago doctors have prescribed a placebo treatment to their patients...
...this is not to deemphasize the importance of modern medicine. There are certainly drugs and treatments on the market that continue to significantly improve upon the placebo effect—but equally important is the perception and the culture of health care...
Those cuts could focus on funding for a range of public services, from health care to libraries and prisons. The impact on the state could be dire. There are concerns that cuts to prisons and police departments, for example, will lead to an increase in crime. And one of the Granholm administration's chief goals - doubling the number of Michigan college graduates - could be derailed by plans to cut a program that awards up to $4,000 to any student who finishes two years of college...