There is a reason medicine are often called drugs: they are often addictive, and like recreative drugs, they are actively being pushed, not by dealers but by the pharmaceutical industries, who work out all kinds of deals with medical doctors and hospitals. It is a well known fact that of the thousands of drugs, virtually none actually cure the patient. Most just suppress the ilness, rather than curing it.
This kind of symptom alleviation is not only a matter of the medical world. In many branches of business, the approach is to design products only as good as they can compete with the people's desire for cheap rather than qualitatively good products. Of course this is not the case everywhere, but it usually requires some critical thinking about when to go for quality over economy. For instance, If I as a hobbyist buy an electrical tool, I don't mind if it is cheap, because I may use it maybe once a month tops, so it will last long enough. But since I am a software engineer and my computer is basically on for several hours every day, you can imagine I will go for quality material.