Hospitals Scrambling for Medications Amid Growing Drug Shortage

Fox News ^ | 5/30/2001 | AP Staff

[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

[johniegrad]

You are correct. The biggest purchasers leverage their size against the manufacturers. It is in a sense price controls and you are already aware that they cause shortages. The medical marketplace has not been a free market since the intrusion of Medicare in the 1960s.

[Cobra64]

The problem is the FDA. When it costs a pharma $500 million to $1 billion to get a drug to market, there’s a serious problem. Get the gov. out of the way and reduce the time and money it takes to get a viable, effective drug to the patients.

It's a shame more people here don't understand business, and the pharma industry in particular. The Feds force them to tie up that working capital for years before allowing them to release the new drug. Furthermore, the drug companies bake the lost opportunity costs of delays and the generics into their strategic pricing plan.

If the primary drug companies went out of business two things will happen:

1) No more R&D and new drugs on the market.

2) Generic drug companies will have nothing to copy-cat, so they're gone too.

[Mase]

The mass media is made up of collectivist idiots who don't know the first thing about economics or science. They demonize the drug industry simply because they believe, like you, that the profit motive is evil. The MSM is no friend of industry and anyone believing such tripe is a fool.

Industry spends their marketing dollars with the mass media because it provides the best means for communicating their message and for building their brand. People who espouse the nonsense that "Big Pharma" is in bed with the MSM also believe that industry and the FDA are in cahoots to screw the unsuspecting public. The inhabitants of this fever swamp have no grasp of the relationship between government and industry because they've never been associated with either. But that won't stop them from hurling their idiocy from the sidelines.

You have no grasp of reality which is why you post your ignorance here. You're just another closet collectivist who could care less about anyone else as long as you get yours. Ignorance is a whole lot easier than learning basic economics or working in the industry. Those things take smarts and effort. You should avoid them because they might hurt your brain. Of course, when you do hurt your brain the pharmaceutical industry will, fortunately, have something to offer you to relieve it. Treating the symptom rather than the cause is the best they can do. Because, as Ron White says, you can't fix stupid.

[phockthis]

sfl

[businessprofessor]

The article was not very specific about the reasons for shortages. There may be different reasons for different drugs. I suspect the shortage involves the interaction of commodity price increases and government interference involving price controls and excessive regulation. Foreign governments impose tight price controls on drugs. Obamacare has brought conditions that have imposed defacto price controls here. Drug companies may be losing money on production given the fixed prices and increasing costs of raw materials. It is rational to reduce production to deal with marginal losses.

The shortages would be easily resolved by eliminating price controls. Since few want to pay for health care, easing price controls is not an option. We will be forced to suffer shortages. Medical care shortages are coming. Even without Obamacare, medical care would be strecthed to its limits with the aging population. Obamacare will break the back of the health care industry even without a shrinking dollar.

We are living in a twist of the classic grasshopper-ant story. The ants wisely save for the coming winter but the grasshopper ignores the obvious need to save. Democrats are the grasshopper party buying votes by intergenerational theft. The baby boomer’s time of need is near but the kitchen is bare, looted by the greatest generation and other Democrat voters who demanded services funded by the excess payroll taxes.

The baby boom generation was seduced by misinformation about the impact of the massive government debt. The misconception is that the young will bear the brunt the impact of unsustainable government spending. It is obvious that everyone will be impacted. The largest impact, howver, will be felt by the baby boom generation. When many baby boomers can no longer work or have much reduced capacity for work, the economic impact will occur. Shortages in health care and inflation will leave the elderly baby boom generation in difficult times. The young do not need much health care as well as possessing the ability to work and adapt to lowered expectations.

[dfwgator]

Isn’t it true that much of the funding for these drugs comes from taxpayer dollars via the National Institute of Health.

Seems to me in that case, that the pharmaceutical companies are getting profits on our dime, while socializing the costs.

[Mase]

Most primary research is conducted in our universities, that is true. Without taxpayer funding of this important part of the equation, primary research would stop even though the drug companies do support this where it is in their interest to do so. However, the drug companies do the heavy lifting when it comes to commercializing products. All the primary research in the world is meaningless until someone utilizes it to help people, and guides it through the testing and approval processes. That's the hard part.

The $30 billion or so of taxpayer money spent supporting this research annually is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast sums of money wasted on entitlements, fraud and other giveaways. That's not to say that the NIH and NSF don't waste huge sums of money supporting junk science. They do. That waste notwithstanding, the primary research supported by our tax dollars is provides one of the better returns on the money the government confiscates from its citizens. JMHO of course.

Anyone who has suffered from disease, or has been affected by someone else who has, should want the drug companies to be highly profitable.I want a future in which more lifesaving drugs are discovered and made available to us and our progeny, not fewer lifesaving drugs. Profit drives innovation. The drug industry spends more on research and development, as a percentage of sales revenue, than just about every other industry in the US. Nine out of every ten new drugs are discovered in the US. That's because the drug companies can still make a profit here.

[dfwgator]

Profit drives innovation.

But isn't it true, that it's more profitable to create a drug that a user must take for the rest of their life, rather than actually developing a cure, that only requires a one-time payment?

[SUSSA]

Be prepared for FedGov to step in with EMERGENCY LAWS that must be passed without review, to fix the Crisis (that they created).

*************************************************

You nailed it!!

[DBrow]

“You nailed it!!”

The Marxist Hegelian Dialectic.

[Mase]

Your comments assume that drug industry R&D is populated by people who would rather prolong disease than cure it. Such an opinion only proves the holder has no knowledge of the industry or the people who dedicate their lives to this work.

Creating sophisticated compounds to fight complex diseases ain't easy. Science progresses as it learns. Outright cures are hard to come by. Your suggestion that this is intentional is a common one and comes mostly from the far left who despise industry and the profit motive. Cynicism among these folks is common but, in this case, cannot be justified.

Of course, there are people who also believe there exists a cheap alternative to fossil fuel that is being suppressed by "Big Oil." Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Food.....they're all bad to some folks.