There are several reasons for these ongoing shortages, Jensen said. Most are due to problems in manufacturing, ranging from contamination to late delivery of raw materials. Other problems include misprints in the drug’s label or packaging and increased demand, she said.
Some people believe the FDA is causing part of the problem by not quickly inspecting plants to allow them to start producing the drug again, but Jensen challenged that notion.
“If the company is having a quality issue, the company doesn’t have to wait for an FDA inspection to restart the manufacture,” Jensen explained. The agency attempts to work with the companies to get drugs back into the market or tries to locate other sources for these drugs, she added.
However, Jensen noted that since most of these drugs are generic, companies don’t make much money on them and may, in some cases, opt to discontinue them.
Joseph M. Hill, director of federal legislative affairs at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, said that, “from our members’ perspective, it is kind of a crisis.”
“We are seeing a shortage of critical drugs in the areas of cancer therapy, pain medications, including anesthetics, and some nutritional products. Some of these are products that people cannot do without,” he said.
Another reason for the shortages, may be that companies are using them to increase prices, Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said.
“There is a pattern here. The drugs for which there is a shortage are the generic drugs, where the ability to make money is not as great,” he said. “If the drug is off the market, they can reprice it.”
While many of these delays are due to real manufacturing problems, “there are instances where I am certain that manufacture was stopped because they wanted to raise the price,” Brawley said.
http://news.yahoo.com/cancer-drug-shortages-getting-worse-fda-says-181011925.html
Maybe Obama will take over the pharmaceutical industry, too.
How low can these money hogs go? From the sty to the sewer to...........hell.
“Maybe Obama will take over the pharmaceutical industry, too.”
Well, yeah, of course. There is a crisis, immediate don’t-read-the-bill government action is required.
I don’t believe the talk about how FDA and the Feds are not involved in the root cause of these shortages.
It is more expensive to produce drugs that require complex procedures.
Labeling? etc. Hardly. The situation exploded in 2010.
With the windfall that Big Pharma is expecting from Obamacare, any old excuse will do while they reduce costs=maximizing profits until their ship comes in.
THIS IS A MORAL AND ETHICAL ISSUE.
For any industry to claim clerical errors for 2 years when patients lives are at stake is unconscionable.
While many of these delays are due to real manufacturing problems, “there are instances where I am certain that manufacture was stopped because they wanted to raise the price,” Brawley said.
This does not make any sense to me. It seems to fit into the standard template of blaming the big pharmaceutical companies. Generic drugs can be marketed once the original patent for the proprietary drug expires. A pharmaceutical company gets exclusive rights to a particular drug for a given period of time, and generally prices them high to cover the developmental costs. Once the patent expires, any company can produce a corresponding generic drug. These companies do not have the development costs to recoup for this drug, so all they have are the basic manufacturing costs. It should be possible to make just as much money producing the generic drug as the original company did when it had exclusive rights to the drug. If the drug is popular, it seems to me, there would be plenty of incentive for some drug company to produce the drug - all other things being equal. At least that's how it seems to me. I welcome any further illumination on this from FReepers who may have specific knowledge on the subject.