ML/NJ
Your operating room pharmacist is correct. I know, I’m married to one.
She comes home everyday with her ears bleeding over drug shortages.
She tries to get ahead of the curve with substitutions but it doesn’t always work.
Hegelian Marxist dialectic operating here, I think.
Government comes into an area and gradually fouls it all up until it’s so fouled up, Government declares a Crisis and takes bold, appropriate steps to take over that area, expanding just a little more. We forget or don’t notice that it was Government meddling that led to the crisis.
Like when Government cut back on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, so health care orgs increased costs for everything else to keep the lights on. Then Government said, look how much costs have increased! We must have RomneyCare on a national basis to fix this crisis!
Now it’s pharmaceuticals. Shortages caused by government regulations! We are heading toward a Crisis if Government does not take over production!
No it does not make sense. We offshore the manufacture of meds. It is a liability business. Our governement keeps our meds in the hands of others to manufacture. More government control.
The New antipychotics were released and all of a sudden liquid Thorazine and liquid ativan disappeared. Cheap effective and reliable and good for people who couldnt think straigt enough to wrap themselves around taking a pill. They accepted the liquid.
Instead of cents per dose, we intitally paid 50 to 100 dollars a dose for the melt in your mouth kinds.
There are over 130 drugs no long available or in short supply.
The EPA and the drug companies were complicit in taking plain old albuterol ihaler off the market. Now there is a new propellent and it is only available as a brand name at ten times the cost.
The government is not your friend, neither are the drug companies.
I heard the same thing in my pharmacy school classes - not just scuttlebutt, as part of the curriculum.
One guess would be that large quantities of fentanyl are being diverted to the illegal drug market. Fentanyl is very popular among addicts and I’ve been told that it’s not hard to obtain on the streets.
My take is that most of the pharmaceutical manufacturers are anticipating ObamaCare and are selling off product lines that are not highly profitable. The firms that buy the product lines are having a difficult time getting the product back on the market due to regulatory pressures from government agencies.
If these old products go overseas, now there is an import/export issue at play here as well. The FDA is a cumbersome beast thet really enjoys paperwork.
We heard the rumor about fentanyl shortage probably six or more months ago. Based on previous rumors (usually correct) we stocked up in advance. I was beginning to think I was mislead until now. Odd that the shortage was announced so far in advance, kind of like someone knew a new manipulation was being planned. I agree with these shortage problems becoming more frequent. It was propfol not long ago. Brevital before that. If versed is next don’t think I can go back to valium days, nasty stuff.