Hospitals Scrambling for Medications Amid Growing Drug Shortage

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

[TennesseeGirl]

"The FDA has taken an unusual step, asking some foreign companies to temporarily ship to the U.S. their own versions of some scarce drugs that aren't normally sold here. That eased shortages of propofol, a key anesthesia drug, and the transplant drug thiotepa."

Remember when we were told NOT to order meds online -- even from Canada -- or else we were all going to die from substandard pharmaceuticals?

[Sacajaweau]

cut the time between the created drug and the generic.

[wjcsux]

Obamacare will fix these problems. </sarc.>

[willk]

“cut the time between the created drug and the generic.”

Then why will drug companies create new drugs?

[bgill]

Note to self - don’t get sick and if I do get sick don’t do it after 3 pm on a Friday.

[RnMomof7]

Remember when we were told NOT to order meds online -- even from Canada -- or else we were all going to die from substandard pharmaceuticals?

I was thinking the same thing as I read this.. also came to my mind most drugs are not even produced here anymore.. they are made in China .. China could just cut off the supply if they wished..

[Clintonfatigued]

If this is what’s happening before ObamaCare, I dread what’ll happen after it takes effect.

[DBrow]

So FedGov messes with the FDA regs to delay new meds and cut the supply of others.

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

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Think of all the different “shortages” that have been reported lately. The politicians with their incompetent demagoguery, taxes, laws and regulations are killing our economy. You can be sure the politician and his immediate family and friends will have any and all necessary medicines. Perhaps when enough people watch their loved one’s die for lack of medicine while they see fat degenerate pols living like kings they will take the “pols” naked to the wall.

[LibLieSlayer]

I along with others here on FR... predicted this... and it is going to get worse and it will be more than medicine in short supply. Yes Virginia... elections do have consequences.

LLS

[PapaBear3625]

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, especially the harder-to-make injectable ones. So if one company has trouble -- or decides to quit making a particular drug -- there are few others able to ramp up their own production to fill the gap, says Valerie Jensen, who heads FDA's shortage office.

This is the main paragraph. What happens is that generics are cheaper -- and since they are cheaper, and carry such a narrow profit margin, companies are not going to jump to make them.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped hospitals are not going to maintain inventories of critical meds, instead depending on "just in time" deliveries. And distributors are not going to maintain inventories, due to how IRS taxes inventory as assets at the end of the fiscal year. So any interruption of the distribution chain means that people will die.

[malos]

They won’t create any new drugs. They will go Galt. I can’t imagine any conservative suggesting this.

[PapaBear3625]

cut the time between the created drug and the generic.

Did you read the article? It is the GENERIC drugs that are in short supply, due to non-viable profit margins. See my post #11.

[tenger]

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.

[haircutter]

I was just informed that my one B/P med, dyazide is no longer available...been taking it for 15 years!!! was told to call my doctor and request a replacement...

wake up voters...Hussein Obama has got to be returned to Chicago or maybe Hawaii or Kenya in 2012 if not sooner.

[Secret Agent Man]

All brought to you by Obamacare, one way or another.

[vetvetdoug]

We are seeing drug shortages and logarithmic escalations of prices for existing drugs in the veterinary field also. It seems every week we cannot get another drug that was readily available just months ago. Right now, we can use drugs extra label which means in innovative methods. I have seen eye ointment, triple antibiotic, go from $1.10 a tube to $12 a tube in just the last year. It is hard explaining to clients that we can't lose money selling them drugs they could previously obtain at a price ten times cheaper.

[Dick Holmes]

The drugs in short supply are already generic. The drugmakers have bigger fish to fry. Drugs still on patent yield much higher profits.

Injectable drugs have to be sterile and meet high purity standards. When they go off patent, they are even less attractive for the drug houses to devote production to.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Something tells me that ultimately this pertains to a combination of overregulation, insane tort laws and ambulance-chasing lawyers. If it doesn’t pay to produce it, nobody is going to produce it.

[EGPWS]

Obamacare will fix these problems.

It will be conveyed as "If you think the shortage is bad NOW, just think how bad the shortage would be if Obama wasn't promoting government health care!"