When cancer patients can’t get the medications they need and surgeries are delayed because anesthesia is not available, market forces have failed. Government intervention in business dealings is often misplaced, but in the instance of the growing prescription drug shortage, it is critical.
Drug makers can’t keep up with demand for some drugs, including those that are used to treat childhood leukemia and cancer. Last year was the worst on record, with shortages of 267 medications, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
From 2006 to 2010, the number of drug shortages in the U.S. grew by more than 200 percent, according to a November report by the Government Accountability Office.
There are myriad reasons for the shortages. The maker of major leukemia and cancer drugs was recently shut down after failing a federal inspection. In other instances, manufacturing problems and a shortage of raw material has delayed production of needed medications. Sometimes, drug makers phase out a drug before ramping up production of its replacement.
As a result, hospitals are delaying surgeries, looking for replacement medication on the gray market and seeking federal permission to import drugs from other countries.
A survey of Maine hospitals, conducted at the behest of Sen. Olympia Snowe, found the shortages to be a top concern.
“We heard from almost every hospital in the state, and what became abundantly clear is that managing drug shortages wastes a phenomenal amount of time and money, and it detracts from patient care,” Sen. Snowe said in a statement.
Nearly every hospital surveyed by the American Hospital Association in June reported dealing with a drug shortage in the previous six months. More than 80 percent delayed treatment as a result.
A bill co-sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins would mandate prescription drug companies to notify the Food and Drug Administration well ahead of drug shortages. Notification is required now only in cases where just one manufacturer makes a particular drug.
The legislation, introduced earlier this month as an amendment to a federal transportation bill, also directs the FDA to provide timely notification to the public of shortages and steps the agency is taking to address them.
These are steps in the right direction.
“The shortages of these vital drugs are causing serious problems around the country, including forcing some medical centers to ration drugs, postpone elective surgeries, or even modify chemotherapy regimens mid-course,” Sen. Collins said in a statement this week.
Under a House bill, drug makers would be subject to a fine of up to $10,000 for each day they violate the notification requirements, with a cap of $1.8 million.
The FDA prevented nearly 200 drug shortages in 2011 due to voluntary early notifications from drug makers, according to Sen. Collins’ office. That’s up from 38 in 2010.
If drug makers continue to be unable to better match needed medicine supplies to demand, regulators have no choice but to take a more heavy-handed approach.
The pharmaceutical industry needs to be nationalized.
They can afford to run television, radio, print adds 24/7/365 on the tax payers dime (they can write them off) the tax payers make up the difference.
They can produce addictive pain medications to a volume that would keep the whole nation stoned indefinetly. Or enough to insure that every man in the USA can function sexually.
Yet they cry poverty as the reason they can’t produce enough critical life saving drugs to supply hospitals.
Does anyone believe that there is no collusion between the drug manufacturers and the gray suppliers who seem able to buy up all existing stocks of critical drugs. Then demand 500% more than cost to dole out some to keep people alive.
And one of the more outrageous things is that the drug dealers who sell doctors on this junk aren’t regulated or licensed, there is no code of ethics or educational requirement – they’re basically used car salesmen pushing legal drugs. This whole industry needs to be reformed.
Do you think that nationalizing the industry will get rid of collusion? Seriously?
With the evidence at hand, do you think the pharmaceutical industry is looking out for our interests?
If your child, relative, friend were waiting for a critical drug that meant the difference between life and death, while one of these gray suppliers were holding out for a few more bucks per pill, what would you do? What would you do if you could only come up with $400 when they demand $500? Would you go out and steal off some poor innocent sap or would you go to your representative, who is in the pocket of big Pharma, or would you go to your gun closet and get your gun and hold the scum hostage until your loved one got the meds they need?
We don’t need the govt here this free enterprise acting in profit thought. Private enterprise has the right to decide who lives and dies because of profit margins its done every day with the health insurance market and the people like it that way or they wouldn’t be oppose the the Affordable Health Care Act you cant have it both ways.
Having a shortage is one way of keeping the price up.
These two clowns voted against national health care reform but want to nationalize drug production and drug distribution so there will be a plentiful supply of drugs nobody can pay for. They ought to team up with Sen. Brown of Ma., and come up with their own reality show.
None of the proposed bills address the underlying problem. They wrongly accept shortages as something we have to learn to live with. We don’t. To understand the root cause of the shortages, see this 1/4/12 white paper, “Connecting the Dots:How Anticompetitive Contracting Practices, Kickbacks, and Self-dealing by Hospital Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) Caused the U. S. Drug Shortage,” by Patricia Earl and Phillip L. Zweig. Available at: http://www.puncturemovie.com, which contains extensive documentation on GPO abuses. In a nutshell, these buying cartels have rigged the $200+ billion marketplace for hospital supplies, including generic drugs, and undermined free market competition.
Cartels ARE “the free market”.
There is no illicit drug shortage in Maine.
Guess the distribution system is better.
Wow. When we had a shortage of flu meds a few years back it was all Bush’s fault. Now that we have the boy President he gets off scott free. This is how the press works; Republican gets blamed, Liberal president doesn’t get mentioned
The pharmaceutical giants are manipulating the market. These people make billions every year. They have to ability to increase production anytime they want. They are also ruining the US healthcare system and strongarming doctors.
Time to nationalize.
x
Another voice from the Hugo Chavez school of pharmacy.
Whew, get government out of the healthcare industry and then time to nationalize. Which to take. How about neither.
Like so many other problems, it would appear that government intervention had a hand in creating this problem, and now the government wants to intervene again with more legislation. GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY!!
Ya that would be a great idea, I could start making alot of these in my basement, wouldn’t have to worry about inspections and all that crap. The gov. would not be able to fine me if some of these medications didn’t work out.. since they are out of the healthcare industry. (scarcasm intended)
Did anyone check the car trunks of the sales reps? Or their brief cases? Usually a shortage in the medical world menas that supply is now down to a months worth of inventory. Someone somewhere has some and just needs to re-allocate the stuff. Shortage does not mean completely out, as in zero avaliable.