Counterpoint from Denmark that has the same movements of “wrap your kid in bubble wrap” and “it’s offensive to wear sombreros”, we don’t see an overuse of opioids or penecilum because the medical system isn’t for profit and you aren’t a customer, you are a patient. Show up saying you feel a flu coming on and would like some penicillin to curb it? The doctor will laugh at you and tell you to come back when you visibly sick, and even then she’ll tell you to just try sleeping it off. Only as a last resort do they actually prescribe harder drugs. Also, you need prescriptions even for larger packs of ibuprofen and paracetamol.
The issue in USA really seems to me to be drive in large by the fact that people are customes who want drugs and doctors are salespeople who want to sell drugs. With opioids it just so happens that the legal barrier got lowered enough that everyone who wanted it for all the wrong reasons could justify buying it anyway, and then they did.
More people in the US also can't take time off, or are at least discouraged to do so. I have also found that many over the counter drugs for e.g. a cold that you find in Scandinavia aren't readily available in the US. Instead they suggest all kinds of fun/scary things that have been banned back home for many years.
We don’t make money by prescribing drugs. Those of us on risk sharing contracts - most of us, directly or indirectly, to a greater or lesser extent - lose money by prescribing drugs.
In Germany doctors have a "budget" per quarter allotted by the public insurers for every patient they treat.
All meds and treatments they prescribe come out of that budget, if at the end of the quarter the doctor ends up being above that budget, then he's stuck with those costs and has pay from his own profits.
In a setup like that, the doctor is held personally responsible for not overprescribing.
Just like insurers only pay a certain amount for meds for certain conditions/treatments. Creating pressure on the pharma industry to also offer smaller packages of drugs, instead of forcing wisdom teeth patients to buy a whole 50 pill bottles.
It's not perfect because it suffers from a bit of the opposite problem of underprescription and doctors being shy about prescribing expensive treatments even when they are needed.
But if that really becomes an issue then patients can just change the doctor, they are always free to do that and never forced to visit a specific doctor.
The issue in USA really seems to me to be drive in large by the fact that people are customes who want drugs and doctors are salespeople who want to sell drugs. With opioids it just so happens that the legal barrier got lowered enough that everyone who wanted it for all the wrong reasons could justify buying it anyway, and then they did.