Free Republic

Drug shortages have reached an all-time high in the United States, pharmacists are warning.During the first three months of 2024, there were 323 active medication shortages, according to American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and Utah Drug Information Service. Previously, the record high was 320 shortages in 2014.This ASHP started tracking shortages in 2001.MORE: Patients, health care providers face shortages of critical drugs, Senate report finds"All drug classes are vulnerable to shortage," Dr. Paul Abramowitz, CEO of ASHP, said in a statement. "Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications...

Let's file this one in the "you can't make this up" category. Down Mexico way, they are running out of farm workers. This is the story: For decades, Mexicans crossed the border to pick Americans’ lettuce, grapes and strawberries. Mexico had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of farmhands — tough, hard-working men who did the jobs most Americans didn’t want. But the country is running short of farmworkers.The workforce is graying; nearly three-quarters of Mexican campesinos are over 45. Young people are turning up their noses at farm jobs. And those willing to do migrant work have other options. Nearly 300,000...

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday it will relocate control of the Newark, New Jersey, airspace area to Philadelphia to address staffing issues ... The FAA, which has struggled with air traffic staffing issues, said it and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) signed a memorandum to relocate control of Newark at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) (N90) to Philadelphia Tower/TRACON by the end of June. The FAA said the change will help "meet continued traffic demand in the busy Northeast Corridor." Several controllers are expected to voluntarily transfer to Philadelphia. New York TRACON is...

The fast-food chain Chick-fil-A backtracked from its decade-old “no antibiotics ever” pledge intended to help prevent human antibiotic resistance linked to the rampant use of the drugs in livestock production. Instead, the company said in a statement that it will embrace a standard known as “no antibiotics important to human medicine,” often abbreviated as NAIHM, which entails the avoidance of medications commonly used to treat people and limits the use of animal antibiotics to cases of actual animal illness. SNIP Chick-fil-A said it will begin shifting to the new policy in the spring of 2024. A company spokesman added that...

The 60,000 patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer over the next three years could be out of luck for a treatment, thanks to Biden and congressional Democrats.Less than 18 months after Democrats rammed through a series of price controls on what Medicare pays for prescription drugs — the better to pay for Tesla subsidies and other green pork — and guess what has happened? Drugmakers are responding to the (bad) incentives Democrats created.Just before the holidays, Bloomberg reported on how many pharmaceutical companies have delayed bringing products to market to maximize the revenue they can generate before Medicare gets to “negotiate”...

Joe Biden's economy is a disaster, but that doesn't mean it can't get worse. A couple of little publicized commerce/transport events make new problems, specifically, shortages of consumer goods, all but certain. Start with what's going on around the Saudi Arabian peninsula, where Houthi rebel rocket and drone attacks on ten commercial ships has reached crisis levels, and major shipping lines, such as Maersk, have opted to go around the horn of Africa the way Magellan had to do, in order to deliver their cargo loads to Europe and beyond.According to the trade publication Insurance Journal:Shipping in the Red Sea...

Vista Outdoor, a parent company to many firearms businesses, told Newsweek that it will substantially increase its ammunition prices due to "an anticipated global shortage of gunpowder."The Minnesota-based company confirmed the authenticity of a December 1 letter sent to customers that it would go ahead with an across-the-board increase of its ammunition and gunpowder prices on January 1."Due to world events our suppliers have notified us of unprecedented demand for and an anticipated global shortage of gunpowder, and thus has increased our prices substantially," Vice President of Sales, Sporting Products Brett Nelson said in the letter. "We must therefore raise...

Just this summer, the nation's pharmaceutical shortage reached a ten-year high, but the problem since then has only gotten worse — and in more ways than one. The shortage was already "extremely concerning" for cancer patients, with oncologist Dr. Ajay Bhatnagar saying, "Hopefully, it can be rectified soon, but currently it’s a concern of how we figure out how to formulate an adequate treatment for these patients without having to ration or delay treatment."That was in July. This week, "Drug shortages hit record highs," according to a DC News Now report on a Senate Finance Committee hearing. (Don't click the...

Recruitment and retention challenges have led the U.S. Coast Guard into a system-wide service retreat. A 3500-person shortfall—a nearly 10% shortage in the enlisted ranks—is forcing the Coast Guard to take ten cutters out of service, transfer five tugs to seasonal activation, and shutter 29 boat stations. The moves, couched as a bland “AY 24 Force Alignment Initiative”, present an unprecedented loss of maritime capability at a time when the United States is facing an array of complex challenges at sea. But the Coast Guard simply “cannot maintain the same level of operations” going forward. Behind the scenes, the service...

The tiny, half-pint cartons of milk served with millions of school lunches nationwide may soon be scarce in some cafeterias, leaving districts across the country scrambling to find alternatives. The problem is not a shortage of milk itself, but the cardboard cartons used to package and serve it, according to dairy industry suppliers and state officials. Pactiv Evergreen of Lake Forest, Illinois, which bills itself as “the leading manufacturer of fresh food and beverage packaging in North America” acknowledged in a statement Friday that it “continues to face significantly higher than projected demand” for its milk cartons.

The number of homes for sale on the market fell for the fifth straight month in September amid the already severe housing shortage. A new report from Realtor.com shows that the total number of homes for sale, including homes that were under contract but not yet sold, fell by 4% in September compared with the same time a year ago. On top of that, available home supply remains down a stunning 45.1% from the typical amount before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, according to the report

For over 35 years, the American political system has been unable to make any significant change to U.S. immigration policy. In June 2023, a bipartisan coalition of representatives introduced the Dignity Act, a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This followed a poll showing that four out of five Americans support bipartisan cooperation on immigration that would address labor shortages and inflation. While U.S. politics may continue to prevent an immigration grand bargain, there are many commonsense reforms the government could take to fill gaps in our current workforce. American policymakers need to wake up to a new reality: The country is...

This seems to be an increasingly common theme on a global scale. We are continually warned that the United States is running low on arms and munitions and may not be prepared to supply Taiwan if China invades. We are similarly assured that we need to continue spending vast amounts of money we don’t have to arm Ukraine or they will likewise run low and be unable to fend off the Russians. But now their enemy in that conflict is making an identical claim. Vladimir Putin told a group of pro-war bloggers this week that his country is running very...

Empty dirt lots are scattered across American cities where developers once planned to build new homes. The problem isn’t that builders can’t find workers or obtain permits. They lack the electric transformers required to connect homes to the grid. “We were so concerned about things like lumber and appliances, and those all help. But then all of a sudden it was this power transformer—you can’t get them,” a home builder in Greenville, S.C., told a Fox affiliate in March. “We have 106 town-home sites and so we’ve only been able to get the first six going.” Transformers step up or...

A recent CNN headline — "We don't have enough doctors" — is quite accurate. The explanation given for the M.D. shortage is completely wrong. CNN notes the "health-care workforce shortage is 'more acute' in Black and brown communities." The black community represents 13 percent of the U.S. population, but only 5.7 percent of American physicians are black. The implication is clear: only black doctors should or can treat black patients or, at a minimum, will treat them properly.This is racist dogma. The vast majority of American doctors (and nurses) are blind to skin color, religion, ethnicity, and even criminal behavior....

The war in Ukraine is so profitable for defense companies in the US and Europe that they're having trouble finding thousands of skilled workers to satisfy a record influx of orders, according to the Wall Street Journal.Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions with a U.S.-supplied howitzer. Photo: LIBKOS/Associated PressPart of the issue is that jobs in the defense industry require niche skills and security clearances - a problem compounded by a flood of defense companies trying to hire at the same time in an industry which has long struggled to meet recruitment goals."Our first priority is really to ramp up...

South Florida is facing gas shortages across the region after it was pummeled with severe storms last week that brought historic rainfall and widespread flooding. About 55 percent of gas stations in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are without fuel as of Thursday morning, according to GasBuddy’s Southeast Florida Live Gas Station Outage Tracker. Another about 34 percent of gas stations are also without fuel in West Palm Beach as demand for gasoline increased after the storms. Intense storms dropped a historic range of 15 inches to 26 inches of rain in the Fort Lauderdale region last week, with much of...

Some parts of South Florida were dealing with major gas supply issues after a storm last week brought torrential rain and flooding to the region, causing fuel delivery delays. A staggering 59% of all gas stations in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area were out of fuel at one point Tuesday, along with another 21% of gas stations in West Palm Beach, according to fuel tracker GasBuddy.com. Some of those shortages were the result of a "panic buying spree, which overwhelmed the system," said Patrick De Haan, head of Gasbuddy's petroleum analysis. He said that there were still "millions of...

I’m sure you know there’s a massive egg shortage and egg farms keep burning down all over America. Eggs are now over $10 per dozen in many places. Meanwhile you keep asking yourself “Why is this happening, sure seems odd?” Well, there sure is an answer to that. Please read to the end and see the REAL reason WHY they don’t want us to have eggs! And it isn’t about the feed! What are Tractor Supply & Purina allegedly doing to the chicken feed? Credible online claims like this (she now feeds a goat mix) have emerged, corroborated by others,...

The semiconductor gold rush is all but over, and we've had our fill. Or so the past month of dismal earnings might have you believe. Electronics giant Samsung saw its profits contract 69 percent during the fourth quarter, while revenues slumped 8 percent overall. South Korean memory manufacturer SK Hynix, meanwhile, followed a few days later with an equally bleak report. Both companies told a story of macroeconomic forces that were suppressing consumer spending and driving DRAM and NAND flash inventories to unprecedented levels. Put simply, where there was once a chip shortage there is now a glut. Well, of...