I think the problem is one of supply. There isn't enough hydroxychloroquine to treat the random patient who may have the virus. By leaving it off-label it is under the control of the infectious disease specialist at the hospital to decide to use the medication and on who.
Teva pharmaceuticals was donating 6,000,000 pills to the US. Based on the now infamous French study you take 3 pills a day for 10 days. Therefore Teva's donation is only enough to treat 200,000 cases.
We currently have over 33000 positives in the USA. If quarantine efforts are not effective that number will surpass 200,000 rather quickly. So do you approve it so that it can get into the hands of people who may not need it or do you leave things as they are and let specialists decide who to treat with it?
The FDA is probably waiting to ensure a plentiful supply before they approve the drug for general use in the disease. This goes for azithromycin as well. It's fairly plentiful but we use it quite frequently for any number of infections. If you approve it for COVID-19 general use will it be available for other uses?
That is a very thoughtful reply. It seems to me the drug is, in general, inexpensive. And full, formal, FDA approval-for-COVID19-specifically, would, as you say, increase demand and remove the gatekeeper - thanks for telling me about the infectious disease specialist. So we need both - formal approval-for-COVID19 plus supply. Seems to me the govt could just write a check to each one of the hydroxychloroquine manufacturers, and talk to them to see how many doses they can produce. Low cost has to be the solution because numbers are so enormous. The high-cost options probably just won’t be able to manufacture the numbers.