[Pessimist]

“My former roommate is a doctor and he told me years ago that this would happen.”

Probably cuz he knew he and his colleagues were over prescribing the ecisting drugs to anyone with a cold (which is not helped by antibiotics anyway).

A lot of doctors these days are little more than salesmaen for big Pharma.

[fightinJAG]

But doctors also have the trial lawyers breathing down their neck. Without tort reform, doctors will continue defensive prescribing, especially when the patient gets nasty demanding the drug.

[Kozak]

Probably cuz he knew he and his colleagues were over prescribing the ecisting drugs to anyone with a cold (which is not helped by antibiotics anyway).

Yeah because
1. Patients demand it. You can explain till you are blue in the face that it's most likely a virus and antibiotics won't help, and they still demand it. If you don't give it to them they call you a quack, go to another who will prescibe it, and when they get better, attribute it to the antiobiotic.

2. We get sued if we don't. Even if there is no evidence an antibiotic would have made a difference.

3. People bitch on their "patient satisfaction surveys". In the ER we now get rated like car salesmen by surveys. If we don't give them EXACTLY what they want, we get hammered on the surveys, and can loose our jobs.

Lots of people have had a hand in screwing this pooch.