My personal opinion is yes.  I know several older patients taking 8 to 12 medications daily, including elderly relatives who are very vocal.  They dislike taking pills to counteract symptoms or reduce side effects, even though they admit they want the better quality of life.  They truly prefer to find and treat the cause of their medical problem, believing they will take fewer drugs, have fewer out-of-pocket expenses, and reduce or eliminate secondary depression, and reducing risks of more medical problems in the future.  I agree with them because my husband, a disabled military veteran, is on 18 daily medications, of which only 5 are for therapeutic cures/controls of specific medical diagnoses.  

Yes, QOL is important, yet by not controlling or curing the original cause, the patients how does one hope for a better future than just popping hands full of pills?  

Per my limited observations (I do validation), it appears therapeutic drugs are much more expensive to develop than QOL drugs.  Is this accurate? 

It would be interesting to survey insurance companies to see if they would prefer paying for one expensive therapeutic or for 3 cheap QOL drugs.  Is this what influences the current focus more than the needs and desires of patients?

My thoughts on changing the situation:  establish an industry proportion of effort to be placed on therapeutic vs. QOL drugs, then have pharma companies align their R&D with those proportions. 

Without industry-wide action, I see a future where therapeutic drugs could become orphan drugs because thecompanies choose not to make them, and not because there are so few people who need them.   

I look forward to reading more thoughts on this issue.  --cc