How do you know that?
Do you really know what your friends tried, what they didn't? Have you actually seen a pharmacist go "tough shit" or are you clinging harder than you need to to the idea that everything sucks and only the gods in Washington can save us?
A certain amount of initiative is needed by the patient somewhere along the line, at least to the point of asking the pharmacist "are there any other options?" Initiative--and a conviction that there might be an answer to the problem if one just tries to find it.
Sometimes I think initiative is being carefully weeded out of Americans over the generations like brains were bred out of domestic turkeys, and for much the same reason.