Does America Have an Addiction to Prescription Medicine?

"It's epidemic. I don't know what the answer is," coroner Robert J. Powell told the paper about the rising deaths of prescription drug abuse. 
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), those who are using at least one prescription drug increased 50 percent between 2007 and 2010.  CBS Atlanta reported that researchers found that 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half receive at least two prescriptions.  A staggering 20 percent of those patients were also found to be on five or more prescription medications and the researchers said prescription drug spending will only increase in the future.

According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1997, two expert panels issued guidelines encouraging doctors to prescribe more prescription medicine, to promote "compassionate care."

So how come America is putting so much energy in medicine that could hurt people in the future and why are they not researching more about Alternative medicine and its ability to treat the cause of the issue, not just the symptoms that the issue causes. For example, instead of treating the headache pain, alternative medicine works to see what causes the headache in the first place. It works to understand and treat the disease to find the root of the problem all while improving the quality of your life.  Maybe if we worried about the underlying problems instead of mask the pain, we could have a healthier and happier country.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-america-has-a-prescription-drug-problem-2013-10#ixzz2iNV5na39