Doctors can't really check up on patients in 5 or 10 minutes, that's part of the problem with requiring the checkups and it fosters resentment in the patient who has to pay $200 for the visit and wait 2 hours past the appointment time in the office.

As others, and I, have said in other comments, prescriptions are not required in all countries and people aren't rushing to the pharmacies to OD on viagra. I don't know why the argument that we need to protect patients from themselves is so popular, because it simply isn't true and that has been proven practically in many countries around the world. I don't know if you know this, but the law requiring prescriptions was only created in the 50's and it was created because of a couple of people making some mistakes and hurting themselves and that case was used to justify the huge, sweeping law that we have today. In effect, a tiny outlier was used to justify massive change to the general population, which didn't have the problem.

Lots of people continue to die from misusing OTCs, everything from Tylenol to Lidocaine to Aspirin, yet we don't put those back behind the counter. Parents kill their own children by giving them aspirin when they have a virus, here's info on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reye%27s_syndrome If your child has a cold, don't give them Aspirin!

People actually do care about their lives and their health. Yes, there are some that are going to abuse drugs, but requiring prescriptions for them doesn't stop that abuse. People don't stop abusing cocaine, marijuana and heroine even though you can't even get them with a prescription (outside some progressive states anyway). Many argue marijuana is still illegal to protect pharmas, but I don't know. Anyway, it's moot, because I don't care if people abuse drugs. No one seems to care that people abuse money or sex or food and those cause lots of problems for entire societies -- much more damaging than someone popping some pills and going to a rave -- which actually may be good for society.

For the record, I don't watch that much tv, but that's beside the point.

The point is, the individual should be sovereign over the self. No one else should tell me what I can and can't do to maintain my own life and no one should be able to force me to give someone else my money in order to maintain it. If I want to continue living, I should be allowed to obtain the drugs I need to do that as long as I'm not hurting someone else.

For over 15 years I've been a victim of this issue, I've studied this issue, and I've traveled to other countries where this isn't an issue. All the arguments I've ever seen supporting the status quo in the U.S. simply aren't valid. The claims that are made to support it have been tested in other countries and the facts contradict them.

Also, what's with the trend lately of people telling me they know more about what I know than I know? You don't know what I do and do not know. Seriously, you need to stop being so arrogant. It just may be that I know a lot more about this topic than you do. One thing is clear to me: I don't need your advice.

Final point, practice does make perfect, but you could say the same thing about computer programming: No amount of wiki or google will replace the actual practice of computer programming, but for people who have chronic illnesses or well known conditions, they have years, sometimes decades of practice managing their illnesses and that could, in fact, be longer than many doctors have had practicing medicine on their condition, which supports my argument.