In New Zealand, I sometimes receive prescription medication in a generic box full of blister packs, where the last blister pack has been cut down to match the prescribed number of doses. Occasionally I'll get a couple of cut down sheets, presumably using up the leftovers from other people's prescriptions.

> The disadvantage is that there are some leftover pills most of the time. E.g. you need 30 pills and there are only units of 20 available.

This is the exact reason why they count pills. You have a prescription for X pills, you get X pills.

It's been a while since I've had a prescription filled, but I think that in New Zealand it's the same. Most prescription drugs like opiate painkillers or antibiotics are counted and bottled.

I used to work at a mail order pharmacy. Even though a machine counted the pills a pharmacist had to certify every bottle. This amounted to bottles coming down a conveyor and the pharmacist picking each one up, scanning it, and looking at a picture of the pills on a screen to make sure they are the same. I wouldn’t doubt if Amazon would need to do the same were they to use individual pill counts.

It's the much superior way to do it though, in France all estimate say we would save a lot of money by doing this, but with such a strong phamaceutical lobby it just never happens. Same reason why somehow we have homeopathy being reimbursed as if it was a real medicine, Boiron is french !