In regard to the essential chronic drugs that are more widely used, one of the examples that is starting to come up in the medical literature right now is statins. A lot of money is being spent on statins. For anyone who doesn't know, these are the drugs that lower cholesterol. There's a growing opinion in the medical research that these do not improve outcomes at all and are not living up to the original therapeutic promise, but they're representing a high proportion of regularly prescribed drugs. Could such a mechanism withdraw an entire class of drug like that if it turns out that we're spending a lot of money on something that doesn't work?
On May 30th, 2016. See this statement in context.