Ongoing crisis postpones treatments, raises risks of patient harm
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comHospitals hunt substitutes as drug shortages rise
Seeded on Mon May 30, 2011 12:57 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
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Hmmm, this is odd. Seems the more government gets involved in things it shouldn't be involved in, the worse that particular market gets for consumers. Maybe this is "nature's" way of weaning us onto the realities that await American healthcare consumers around the corner.
Oh? ... Many of you think things will get better as Obamalosi care gets more and more implemented in the coming years? OK, you keep up the optimistic thoughts because optimism will be the only thing we will have left.
I guess it couldn't possibly be, that like eveything else, shortages drive up prices at the risk of the general population? This is true regardless of the product(s). The simple fact is, there isn't nearly enough competition for American drug companies. Who would oversee this industry under your plan??
This isn't odd at all. It is profit driven, you may have noticed that the very expensive drugs are not the ones usually affected. As usual the coorperations are willing to let the people suffer and die as they get bigger, richer and fatter on our blood.
I wonder, if you forced all providers: Doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical supply vendors, medical equipment manufacturers and even insurance companies non profit. Would this be happening?
When economics in the 80's forced a lot of medical care out of the non profit to the for profit arena, the price of health care started to sky rocket.
stexan
This is nothing to do with obama....this is the unregulated free market at work per Bush/Cheney....enjoy.
As they say, ignorance is bliss, and lIfe must be grand for such a simpleton as you.
Didn't the Republicans warn that this would happen? The people on the left laughed at them.
When my medical insurance rose by $400.00 a month last year I called and complained. They told me the increase was necessary in order to prepare for the medical changes in policies and procedures which will happen in a few years.
Right now the US government is wasting millions every day bombing Libya. What happened to all the anti-war demonstrators?
Stexan -
What does this issue have to do with the government? The government can't force a company to produce an item. If they could, a lot of these shortages wouldnt happen. Which would mean that the government would need to be more involved. The problem is greed.
This has been an issue for many years, long before Obama was even elected.
Jo Ann
Just an FYI, the republicans tried for many years to have government run healthcare. The model used was based off of the model the republicans gave years ago. It was also based off of the state run medical care in Massachusetts. That program was enacted by a republican, and was based off of what republicans wanted years ago.
My medical insurance rose by ridiculous amounts when Bush was in office (he was a republican) The past 2 years were the lowest % of increase (dramatically) I have had since joining the workforce (10years ago) I don't credit Obama for that at all. I also wont blame the government run healthcare for my cost increase. If anything I will give it credit for slowing down the rate of increase I had been experiencing in previous years.
Insurance companies are using the new mandates as an excuse to raise prices. What has been their excuse for the past decade?
It has everything to do with many of these drugs aren't on patent, and there isn't much profit in them, so they put their efforts into making the high profit drugs with patents. Like Morphine for instance, it's cheap and there are huge supplies of opium which morphine is extracted from. The corporations that make the stuff, do what they want to do, then if there's a shortage, they have an excuse to make it at higher cost, similar to the false shortage of petro products and the higher cost of gasoline. There needs to be some reward incentives for them to make the common drugs, so that we have them. Plus there could be some sort of drug bank, with raw materials at hand for these times, instead of the speculators treating it all as a commodity.
Americans are the captives of big Pharma. Note that other countries don't pay the same for the same drugs, which is why the patients are making runs to Canada and Mexico for their drugs. Note, too, how huge the big Pharma lobbies are and what they pay their CEO's and how many millions they spend on advertising.
To all of you on here who understand that this is just the beginning of what ObamaCare is going to do, just stop trying to convince everyone else. They worship the 'Healer-In-Chief' without question, they see things happening right in front of them and try to pretend it is something else, and use their new 'tone and civility' to trash you and call you names because they have nothing else. They can't hear you, they never will, and they will not admit that President Zero is anything but glorious in his wisdom.
Sadly, they don't realize that by the time they realize the truth, when the consequences of this disastrous social plan finally lands at their doorstep, it will be too late...for all of us.
Liberals, Dems, and Obama supporters, let me save you the time and write your response for you...."Blah, blah, blah Bush's fault!!!!, blah, blah, blah TWO WARS!!!, blah, blah, blah you're a racist!!!, blah, blah, blah greedy corporations and speculators!!!, blah, blah, blah the rich!!!!, blah, blah, blah (insert any generic insult because we have no other argument)"
This is not Obama. It is healthcare for fun and corporate PROFIT where the health part loses out to the profit part.
Profit is the king in our system, and as long as healthcare and medicine are provided for profit only, we will continue to be used and abused by big pharma and big insurance. Why do you think they fight single payer so hard? PROFIT!
True, profit is king, but try getting anyone to work for free. There are going to be more shortages if the profit margin is no enough to make drug manufacturing worth while. How would single payer help that? You cannot make someone produce a product in this country without paying for it and you cannot trust manufacturers in other countries to do it right without FDA supervision. See comment #4.2. Spot on.
Pharma Ceo's and Private Insurance CEO's are overpaid, but they helped right the current Healtcare Bill, so don't expect them to take a pay cut.
See comment #4.2. Spot on!
To all of you who blame anyone that doesnt agree with you, this was an issue LONG before Obama. This problem has nothing to do with Obama or government run healthcare. It has nothing to do with insurance even. It has to do with companies that produce the product, and their greed. Sometimes its an actual problem because maybe a large batch was recalled or they legitimately can not get an ingredient from a supplier. Sometimes their factories get closed down for months at a time. Sometimes they decide they dont make enough profit on a drug so just decide to not produce it anymore. What does ANY of that have to do with Obama or the healthcare overhaul?
Just an FYI - I am not a liberal, democrat, or even an Obama supporter. Yea I voted for him, but if Palin made VP I would probably shoot myself. I would much rather have Obama in office than Palin. If McCain had chosen another VP I may have considered voting for them.
comment #1.13: I tried to correct typos. Paragraph 2 should have read, "Pharma's CEOs and Private Insurances' CEOs are overpaid but they helped write the current Healthcare Bill, so don't expect them to take a pay cut."
I agree with Becca, this is not a Republican problem nor is it a Democrat problem. Healthcare has been manipulated from ALL sides for many years starting before WWII. It is a real shame that patients suffer as a result of the problems with drug manufacturing that she accurately describes.
How do you tell a patient they're going to die because we don't have a necessary medication???
With a Pharma CEO salary survey and stock reports.
"You are going to die so they can get richer."
Pretty simple.
Get a grip, STexan. It's not about government care -- it's about pharmaceutical corporations moving the market to ever more expensive substitutes. I've been on a muscle relaxant [with a host of other drugs] since a devastating accident in 2007 which the manufacturer discontinued making this Spring. Not only was it the least expensive drug in my regimen, I now am given the choice of several alternative drugs 3x more expensive than the one that was dropped. Get it?
Government should simply seize and nationalize the drug companies who are causing these shortages.
I agree, some things are too important to leave in the hands of profit driven companies.
I think you have it the other way around. It's the drug companies (and corporations in general) that have seized and nationalized the government for their own profit.
It's the American way!
Must be former Enron executives working at the pharmaceutical companies. We need a government run medicine factory. To Hades with the crooks in the legal drug biz.
We have one. It's called Mexican Drug Cartels.
Nevermind a few headless bodies south of the Border. Those are just brown people anyway.
Do you really think that government control is the answer to anything? Really?
This might sound like a nutty idea, but does anyone else think we might be having a shortage because we donate half of our medications to countries like Africa? I know it might far out there, but it just seems to me ever since we've upping our drug donations to Africa and other 3rd world countries to "fix" them, we've been running low on drugs for the American population. If this is the case, we ought to start taking care of our own before we go ahead and ship our supply to a country where we don't even know can be fixed or not...
You are absolutely correct!! Why the hell we have to 'fix' the rest of the world is beyond me. Lord helps those that help themselves, so goes the saying.
No one is shipping these drugs to Africa! Where do you come up with these numbskull ideas!
Drugs companies send the drugs rejected by our FDA to Africa.
No, we are having this problem because idiots like you can't distinguish fact from "whatever sh1t pops up in my head".
Please note that Africa is not a country. It is a continent. Big difference.
There are so many things wrong with this statement...
We dont donate half our medication to anyone. We do donate some medication, but not half. Most of the medications we donate (or sell) to other countries are for things like malaria and TB, which are rampant in other parts of the world but not so bad here. We dont need 100ks of pills for malaria. Other countries do. Also, Africa is not a country. Anything you may have said in your statement that may have seemed smart, was negated by this very idiotic statement. Africa is a continent comprised of around 55 or so countries. Some of those countries need more help than others. Some of them still deal with diseases that have been eradicated from this country.
Most of the meds that are in short supply in this country (and others) are not meds that we routinely donate to 3rd world countries (or continents I guess...) in large amounts. Also, if we were running low on something, we would probably ship them less.
The issue is greed. Plain and simple.
Get real. All drug companies are like insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce. They all have our congress in their pockets. Real reform will happen when the public really gets involved, but I don't think that will happen any time soon. By the way, I thought it was illegal to import drugs from foreign countries.
It's only illegal if you don't give the government their cut.
You can legally import up to a 90-day supply of any medication for which you have a prescription written by a USA-based physician. I got meds from Canada for six or seven years.
My daughter in law works in a pharmacy and she has been telling me of these shortages for some time. I do find it interesting that the most expensive drugs are seldom in short supply. That particular fact makes a good case for government health care. It's obvious that the free enterprise method is no longer working well.
Look, I don't see any Pharma CEOs or their families that are starving, so I would say it's working quite well.
Oh, you mean that's not the point?
Pharmaceutical corporations have the upper hand, albeit a big rip off. This is ridiculous to say the least and of course our fabulous government won't do a damn thing. The FDA is a joke too.
what a load of hooey -- also, regarding that delaying of the last chemo for that girl -- most people dont ever make it to the "last" treatment and most treatments are fully effective at about 75-80% of the treatment schedule, so in regards to the woman being afraid her daughter's cancer would come back without that very last treatment, she's way off -- the cancer is either going to come back or not, with or without that last treatment. also, to anyone that tries to relate this to obama"care", quit being a dumbass, and also, i'm so sorry you feel that not everyone in the country deserves decent medical care -- when you get sick and your insurance drops you or tells you you can't have a drug that could save your life, i hope you'll remember your stance on universal health care.
@Karma-
As a transplant patient scrounging in a nationwide pharmacy search monthly to find a specific drug to keep my immune system at bay, you are sady mistaken on your 75-80% fallacy, my friend.
Need a drug to make it through another day and then come tell me about 75-8-% will work.
I don't give a @#it or want for universal health care. Just fair access to pharmaceuticals, dumbass.
This article hits close to home for me, recently found that the blood pressure meds I've been taking for YEARS is no longer available (not enough profit in older generic drugs you buy for $4 at Walmart). My doctor and I have been scrambling to find a replacement. The government has no hand in this at all, it's the corporate greed at Big Pharma.......the real money is in new products, pills they can advertise on TV to help you get a good night sleep, have sex for hours at a time at 80 years old, etc.
We're becoming a third world country and we don't even realize it, I've been telling people this for years.....
Give me a break--We don't ship cystic fibrosis drugs to Africa! (Cystic fibrosis is a disease mainly affecting caucasians.) Yet, there's a shortage here.
It's pretty clear that drug companies are concentrating on the drugs that make them the most money. The free market at work, folks. The individual means nothing;profits mean everything!
Bart, bingo!
You are SO wrong. Individuals DO mean something to drug companies. It's just a very small set of individuals - ie. the board, the C-levels, the stockholders, and the politicians on their payroll.
;)
So, we're importing cost-effective medications from other "socialized medicine" countries? Guess our "pay through the teeth" healthcare system has taken yet another back seat to foreign national healthcare systems.
When you're filing for bankruptcy because you can't afford your kid's life-saving medications, just remember to thank the GOP for all of their hard work to put you in this position. Maybe your local billionaire, who got YOUR taxbreak, can help with the expenses . . .NOT!
Heck yeah, let's make THEIR taxpayers fund our prescription needs! We're probably saving their country from some deadly military threat (that we created so our weapons manufacturers could make more money), so they OWE us one!
If you can't afford your medications, maybe your GOP representative will fess up some of their "taxpayer provided" healthcare to help out.
Are you crazy, GOP politicians are ENTITLED to their Cadillac healthcare plan just like any other criminal!
Get used to such headlines. Such news will become non-news in a few years. We will become numb as today's expectations are replaced by harsh economic realities. Life will then be precious to the one living it and a few loved ones.
I see trouble looming in the horizon. Not necessarily because of the shortages of drugs, but rather from what pharmaceutical companies can do to get FDA approval on experimental drugs more quickly.
Sounds like, hold your horses now, we need socialized medicine. If the human being can not get needed drugs that work for him simply because there is not enough money to be made then what is left? The Government taking over the drug industry and producing those needed drugs as bad as it seems may be the only choice. Otherwise start up the Soylent Green centers and start killing human beings because they no longer make money for the fat cats.
What a hell of a world we are living in!
The last time I needed a refill of my diabetes drug, Metformin, I had to call three different pharmacies because it was OUT OF STOCK and nobody knew when their backorders were coming. Metformin is probably the #1 most prescribed diabetes medication on the market and has been a generic for years. There's no excuse for something like this. It took two years for my doctor to find the right mix of diabetes medications for me, and I don't want to start experimenting with new drugs again simply because pharmaceutical giants are playing with their profits. It seems fairly obvious that they want doctors prescribing their newer "designer" drugs instead of time-tested generics. Trouble is, the last time I tried a designer drug it nearly killed me with side effects that hadn't been documented yet. Somebody has to stop this madness.
Big pharmaceutical companies have been in bed with our politicians for years. If you create artificial shortages when you bring them back into production you can charge more for them, just like th oil companies do and we the American people take it and smile. This is as crooked as it gets and the right wing wants big health care to give us even more of this insanity. These shortages aren't happening in Europe because they don't have profit incentive health care. Vote any way you want but if you vote against nationalizing health care you won't be able to afford any care at all. Drive up the costs of drugs and what happens to the cost of health insurance? Get the picture, big business gets it coming and going. Keep smiling!
It's all about big business attempting to black mail the public. I get closer and closer to thinking nationalization might be worth considering.
I find it quite amusing that the government is letting imports in from other countries. I read six months ago that this was illegal. I guess the government is just speaking from both sides of their mouths again! The drug companies are manipulating the market pure and simple. They are reducing the supply of the more affordable drugs and then in turn saying only the more expensive exist and are available. Funny how two weeks ago my kid was given amoxicillin for strep and it worked much faster and better than a name brand he was put on previously and had to go back and retreat again not to mention all of the missed days of his schooling. Drug companies ARE manipulators and those that do NOT think so are really clueless to what is going on.
It's not illegal, just illegal to do it yourself or from non-approved countries, because it's risky, like China putting poison in baby formula. If I remember right, we import lots of drugs from India. What about Pfizer, a German company, Glaxo Smith Kline, Brit and so on. You need to read the details and know the facts, so then you can take the time to write your politician and tell them you aren't going to take it anymore!
Its all about the bottom line. As a supply of anything in demand goes down the price goes up. There does not seem to be a shortage of generic drugs, drugs in Canada or Mexico. Plus you can get anything you want on the web from reliable sources.
Look like they stole this right out of the oil producers play book.
Create a virtual shortage to drive up the price.
AssHats, the all of them.
Since Obama cut a deal with big pharma in exchange for Obamacare support, what does anyone expect?
This been going on for years way before your evil so called Obamacare. Grow up, its getting worse. It's all about BigPharm's profits.
So we're running short of a few drugs here and there. Big deal. The important thing is we're still able to borrow enough money from red china to keep our wars of occupation in Afghanistan and iraq funded to the tune of $12,000,000,000 a month. Now that's a LOT of aspirin.