Monday, October 31, 2011
The Elephant in the Room
In an effort to decrease the widespread shortage of medications, the President today ordered the FDA and the CDC to increase the things that he ordered them to do that caused the problem in the first place. Here are some of the generic, life saving medications that are in short supply due to the mandate that all older drugs go through millions of dollars of testing that new drugs go through and as a result, no one can affort to make them: fentynl, succinyl choline, etomidate, propofol, decadron, and phenergan. Before you need that life saving surgery, better call ahead and reserve some of these meds!
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4 comments:
Gee ...next thing you know ...gas Docs are gonna have to resort to casting spells,hypnotizing or doing the surgery dance for OR patients to put them out and keep them under with singing lullabies. New prerequisite for working in the OR? That you all can carry a tune. ;)
Government Price Controls Produce Cancer Drug Shortage
08/08/11 - Reason.com and The NYTimes
Nuanced government intervention produces a better, cheaper world.
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[edited] Drug companies used to charge inflated prices to Medicare and insurance companies, “average wholesale prices". President G.W. Bush signed The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Medicare would pay a drug’s actual average selling price plus 6%. It indirectly restricted the prices from increasing by more than 6% every six months, because of the time it takes drug companies to compile actual sales data, and the government to revise the average selling price.
An unintended consequence. In the first three years after a cancer drug goes generic, its price can drop by as much as 90% as manufacturers compete for market share. But, if a shortage develops, the drug’s price cannot increase again to attract more manufacturers [or supply]. The low profit margin [from this price control] means that manufacturers face a hard choice: lose money producing a lifesaving drug or switch limited production capacity to a more lucrative drug.
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To Throckmorton,
The above is at least one reason for the current drug shortages. Would you have a link to any new need for re-verification of older, now generic drugs?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110324/02181913605/fda-suddenly-bans-drugs-that-have-been-market-decades.shtml
Thanks, Throckmorton.
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