If a drug isn't one of the following it should be available over the counter.

1. heinously addictive

2. incredibly dangerous when not used exactly correctly

3. an antibiotic (due to the resistance externality)

And for drugs that do meet one of these conditions, doctors should be able to write lifetime prescriptions for cases where the medication is used to treat a permanent condition. This probably covers 95% of non-antibiotic prescriptions. The savings from removing the gatekeepers in terms of time and money would be massive and the costs would be minimal.

Then who would feed the gatekeepers?

We'd have to grant some form of blanket immunity to drug companies the way we currently do with vaccines.

Also, aren't most mostly benign drugs dangerous when combined with the wrong other mostly benign drugs? The gatekeeping protects against that.

Before pearl clutching about individual abuse of antibiotics, let’s go after factory farms abusing them at scale.

I should be allowed to buy front line antibiotics from the grocery store. It’s infuriating that this is not possible..

What a brave thing to say on a message board which thinks having a conversation with a chatbot should be illegal lest you ask it how to deal with emotions.