Posted on 05/30/2011 9:01:22 AM PDT by TennesseeGirl
WASHINGTON -- A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses -- from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest -- has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment.
"It's just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient's life and we find out there isn't any," says Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
The problem of scarce supplies or even completely unavailable medications isn't a new one but it's getting markedly worse. The number listed in short supply has tripled over the past five years, to a record 211 medications last year.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/30/hospitals-scramble-medications-amid-growing-drug-shortage/#ixzz1Nr3MhZfO
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
We are on the slippery socialistic slope to third world mediocrity. Thanks, libs, thanks, progressives, thanks Marxists, thanks ignorant lazy voters!
A bigger problem is the tort lawyers. A big part of that $1B is making enough clinical tests to try to convince a jury that the company did all it could to anticipate adverse effects.
Tort reform would be needed, where jury awards would be capped at $1M for death/total-disability due to adverse drug effect, and going down from there.
From the article: "Some experts pointedly note that pricier brand-name drugs seldom are in short supply. The Food and Drug Administration agrees that the overarching problem is that fewer and fewer manufacturers produce these older, cheaper generic drugs,"
No truer words were every said.
Humm, don’t you think that it may make the problem worse?
Big Pharma’s revenge: You WILL use our overpriced drugs or YOU WILL die!
To make my prejudices worse, I heard of a government-paid-for program where people are urged to turn in their unused drugs. They reported there were 8 TONS of drugs turned in in one year. This is an outrage. Taxpayers probably paid for many of these drugs and now they can pay to dispose of them.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for that. The sheeple will be told it’s Big Pharma’s Fault, Wall Street’s Fault, The Republicans’ Fault.....works every time.
” And distributors are not going to maintain inventories, due to how IRS taxes inventory as assets at the end of the fiscal year.”
You have that exactly right - the way the tax code is written it just makes doing business the right way impossible. IRS should be dismantled and let people and businesses run their own lives. It’s all part of the “government knows better” nonsense that is destroying us.
Many friends have had the exact same experience. obamao needs to go!
LLS
LLS
Obam will use this “emergency” to implement a single payer system.
“generics are cheaper — and since they are cheaper, and carry such a narrow profit margin, companies are not going to jump to make them.”
But if there is a shortage of generics, then why doesn’t the price rise to eliminate the shortage and make it worthwhile to produce them?? It’s gotta be an artifact of some kind of price regulation. Probably the insurance companies or government simply won’t pay more than they are for a generic.
Something happens to bring things to a point where there's only one provider, and that provider is not making much of a profit. Given two or more providers, I'm going to guess that regulations mandated picking the one with the lower price, until there was only one.
Short Supply of existing Drugs This is not about researching new drugs.
Drug manufactures either Cant or Wont make enough.
Unfortunately, illness isn’t a respecter of person, business hours, weekends or holidays.
I have little doubt that the majority of the drugs involved are less profitable to make because the government is the actual purchaser on behalf of somebody else who hasn't the ability to pay. The government's effort to contain costs is probably the actual cause of the shortages.
Well the government said so and the Pharmaceutical companies fund the politicos - so you are just being un-American if you don't believe them. Shame on you.
I can understand why that process would restrain competition and drive the price up. What I can’t understand is why those generic companies which are in business would sell the product at such a low price that there is a shortage. Why not jack up the price and eliminate the shortage? The only explanation I have is that their ability to jack up the price must somehow be restricted by non-competitive factors. My suspicion is that either the insurance companies, the government, or both have basically told them, “This is what we’re going to pay for it, and nothing more. If you can’t sell it for that, then so be it.”
In other words, it’s not the supply side that is the problem, but the demand side.
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