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...

Baltimore is in the throes of a policing apocalypse, and the situation is nothing short of apocalyptic. Last week, just THREE police officers were left to patrol an entire district teeming with 61,000 residents. Let that sink in. Calls for help, including reports of child assault, are going unanswered because the police simply can't keep up. It's a dire state of affairs when law enforcement is unable to respond to the most basic calls for assistance. Adding insult to injury, the department is now forced to postpone police training in a desperate bid to address the severe shortages. But how...

The crisis in Cuba has seen its government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage, as residents take to the streets in a rare sign of social unrest Cuba is "on the verge of total collapse" as the country has been hit by blackouts with residents taking to the streets calling for "food and power". The crisis has seen the Cuban government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage. As the Caribbean island goes through its harshest economic crisis in three decades, the communist regime is resorting to hitherto unseen cries for...

Pittsburgh’s Bureau of Police is responding to staffing shortages by foregoing any officer presence in dispatch offices 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. daily. The Daily Mail reported that the cut was announced last month by Pittsburgh police chief Larry Scirotto, who noted, “Data said that from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m that we had 8% of our call volume, yet we had 33% of our personnel working during those periods of time.” Scirotto’s decision comes as the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has dwindled to just 740 officers. In late February, Breitbart News pointed out Scirotto also made clear officers would...

a larger campaign to drive Americans out of rural areas and centralize access to food, the Biden administration is rolling out a draconian and needless new wastewater rule that could put small and mid-size food processing facilities out of business. A large group of United States senators and representatives are demanding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdraw a new meat and poultry wastewater proposal, which they claim “stands to hamper rural economies and drive small- and mid-sized processing facilities out of business.” “Given the technical complexity and high costs of wastewater treatment alterations, coupled with the massive expansion of the...

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”...

Comments during Ammo Inc.’s Nov. 9 earnings conference call indicate enthusiasts can expect cartridge prices to increase for the rest of the year and continue to do so through 2024. Officials from the firm base that prediction on demand for its Streak Visual Ammunition, Jagemann Munition Components, /stelTH/ Subsonic Ammunition and Ammo Incorporated Signature lines. Sell through on Gunbroker, which it also owns, supports that conclusion. One caller asked if the recent increase in ammunition sales reflected a seasonal trend, rather than an unexpected market shift. Ammo Inc. CEO Jared Smith answered, “So we would expect anywhere between a 5-...

Despite Biden administration efforts, children’s hospitals across the country report some chemotherapy drugs commonly used for leukemia and lymphoma are hard to find. Pediatric cancer doctors are sounding the alarm about a growing shortage of chemotherapy drugs for children. The dwindling supplies add another layer to the ongoing cancer drug shortage crisis that’s left doctors scrambling and forced patients to make difficult choices about treatments since early February. The Biden administration has taken steps to address the crisis, in some cases successfully: Doctors say that shortages of two cancer drugs, carboplatin and cisplatin, have eased significantly in recent weeks. However,...

The Minneapolis Police Department is suffering from historically low staffing shortages as they deal with the lowest level of uniformed personnel in four decades, according to the Star Tribune. The city’s department has just 585 sworn officers and out of 22 cities, it has the lowest ratio of officers to population, the Tribune reported. The Minneapolis police department has also leaned on other law enforcement partners as well as civilian analysts to help out with some of their work. Over the past few years, Minneapolis has experienced the worst of the police staffing shortages in the US. “This is absolutely...

The effects are being felt nationwide, with support for the war falling as Russians feel the financial pinch caused by sanctions... "Western sanctions seriously disrupt the Russian economy. At the very least, they increase production costs for Russian enterprises," Sonin said... "Sanctions cannot destroy the Russian economy — sanctions are not missiles or bombs — but they slow down the production and decrease the volume of what Russia produces," Sonin added... On August 23, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported gasoline shortages at fuel stations across the country. This happened in the cities of Astrakhan, Volgograd, Saratov, Ryazan, and Novosibirsk, as well...

The recent spate of flight delays and cancellations may persist for as much as a decade — due to a shortage of some 32,000 pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers, as well as “unrealistic scheduling” by airlines, according to an investigative report. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CBS News his office is investigating several airlines for what a rep called “unrealistic scheduling,” which leads to a carrier’s inability to provide the expected service to the flying public. Experts said the trend in staffing issues suggests that the problem could get a lot worse before it gets better — and could...

If you’re planning to buy some beef to throw on the grill over the next few weeks, expect to pay up to three times more than you did just a couple of years ago, when our domestic supply was plentiful due to a historic cattle selloff. Since 2021, ranchers have been coping with drought and record feed prices, which forced many of them to send their animals for slaughter earlier than usual. And while that led to a higher supply and steadier prices back then, now it is resulting in falling production, empty shelves, and a painful spike in prices...

Cancer centers are contending with shortages of key chemotherapy drugs, with potentially dire consequences once the scarcity starts hitting patients. A new survey released this week by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) found that 93 percent of cancer centers are reporting shortages of carboplatin and 70 percent are reporting shortages of cisplatin. These two drugs are commonly used together to treat a wide variety of cancers — including breast, lung, prostate and many types of leukemias — often with the aim of curing them.

Thousands of patients are facing delays in getting treatments for cancer and other life-threatening diseases, with drug shortages in the United States approaching record levels. Hospitals are scouring shelves for supplies of a drug that reverses lead poisoning and for a sterile fluid needed to stop the heart for bypass surgery. Some antibiotics are still scarce following the winter flu season when doctors and patients frantically chased medicines for ailments like strep throat. Even children’s Tylenol was hard to find. Hundreds of drugs are on the list of medications in short supply in the United States, as officials grapple with...

There are more troubles in the food sector as market manipulation has driven up the price of sugar while creating what appear to be impending sugar shortages. A lack of deliverable sugar ahead of Friday’s expiry has sent the white sugar futures contract for May to its highest level in more than 10 years. According to John Stansfield, a senior sugar analyst at DNEXT Intelligence, the open interest for white sugar, or the number of contracts still needing to be closed, implies a hefty delivery of the commodity above 880,000 tons. The problem is that, when coupled with short positions,...

A new Senate report found that drug shortages in the U.S. are increasing in frequency and duration, due to over-reliance on foreign countries like China and India, which is posing national security concerns. The report from the Democrat-led Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs provided a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s ability to predict drug shortages and address them effectively. It also laid out troubling statistics on the rate of drug shortages.

The United States is not building enough homes to account for the number of people setting up their own households. As a result, there is a sizable shortage of new homes after more than a decade of under-building relative to population growth, according to a new analysis from Realtor.com released Wednesday. The gap between single-family home constructions and household formations grew to 6.5 million homes between 2012 and 2022. However, this figure overstates the housing shortage, since new multi-family homes offer options both to buyers and renters. If multi-family construction is included — which is predominantly rental units — this...

A lack of machine tools is constraining the United State's ability to ramp up ammunition transfers to Ukraine, the Army's top weapons buyer said March 3. The timeline for acquiring new machine tools “are often the long poles in the tent on getting capacity increased,” said Douglas Bush, assistant Army secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology. “These machines are the size of buildings. You don’t just go buy it from a parking lot somewhere.” U.S. and allied production of artillery ammunition has emerged as a key problem in supplying Ukraine, which burns through thousands of shells a...

With the war in Ukraine entering its second year — and the U.S. continuing to provide the embattled country with military aid in the form of rockets, guns and ammunition — the Pentagon is stepping up production of critically-needed supplies. Cancian said Ukraine's use of artillery shells far outstrips the Pentagon's capacity to make them. Precision-fired munitions for the long-range HIMARS system are another need, so Lockheed Martin is gearing up to turn out one new rocket every 10 minutes at its plant in Arkansas. And with the U.S. struggling to keep Ukraine supplied in its fight against a decrepit...

This won’t help the egg shortage. Several fire crews were called to a massive fire that occurred at an egg farm in Bozrah, Connecticut on Saturday afternoon. The fire occurred at Hillandale Farms located on Schwartz Road. At the time of this writing fire crews from Colchester, Salem, Lebanon, and several other towns are all responding to the scene to put out the blaze. WATCH: