I don't have an ideological view on this, but I'll give you a specific example of what the problem has been with one drug.
Gabapentin is a drug brand-named Neurontin that was promoted for chronic “neuropathic pain”. It became a $3-billion-a-year blockbuster in the U.S. in about 2000 to 2004. Pfizer was successfully sued and convicted of racketeering fraud in United States federal court for its promotion, because there was virtually no evidence that it was effective and lots of evidence that it was not.
They were able to hide that by recruiting key opinion leaders in medicine who gave the message that you need to start with a small amount and then gradually increase the dose and keep taking more and more and for a long time, none of which was true. There was no clear dose response; the drug generally did not work at all. One could tell within hours, and certainly within a day or two, whether it was going to work or not for your own pain, and yet they managed to make a $3-billion-a-year empire out of that drug.
The legacy of that is that, as Dr. Eyolfson will undoubtedly be able to confirm for you, is that people feel they need to take gabapentin for a year or two years. As a doctor, you ask, “Why do you keep paying for this even out of your own pocket?”—or for Lyrica, which is not covered in most provinces—and the reply is, “Well, the doctor told me to keep taking it and it would work eventually.”
It sounds ludicrous, and yet as an experienced physician I could weep enough tears to fill this room over the times I've seen that situation and seen an individual's money, which could have been used for a better purpose, wasted, or public money wasted.