Your point about doctors being automatons who follow diagnostic flow charts is exactly correct. When I entered pre-med eduction the idea I had in my mind was a old school black bag doctor focussing on wellness. The AMA will have none of that. Wellness, do you think the pharmaceutical companies who have their money lobbying hands in everything want wellness? Hell no.
Discussion
"How dare you actually use your brain? We paid good money to make you prescribe our meds!"
People think this is only a US issue but it happens here too because states are corrupt.
I was literally told by four different GPs that oxy is less addictive than morphine. They were happy to script me 40mg of IR oxy per day but not oral morphine (less than half as strong) because "it kicks in faster so it's more addictive."
The last doc I spoke to must have known it was bullshit because they sighed and pretty much said "yeah look it's the guidelines, I'm not allowed to prescribe anything else."
On what I'm certain is a totally unrelated note, Mundipharma, the international oxy pushing company still fully owned by the Sacklers, is based on the UK.