Further to this lengthy SDA post from last December (which I suggest you re-read in its entirety), the problem of pharmaceutical shortages continues unabated – and largely unreported. An Instapundit reader;
As a pharmacist of 25 years currently working in hospital pharmacy-I can tell you that the drug shortages are ongoing, dire, and in some cases life-threatening. Take a look at ashp.org/shortages to see the extent of the problem. Many items on the list are for crash carts and critical care.
We’ve had to resort to back-up products, alternatives and work-arounds. All of which compromise quality of care and safety.
Here’s the current list of drug shortages from American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
Ayn Rand, 1957;
Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patient, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said only ‘to serve’…Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce..
We constantly increase the quality control standards, increase regulation costs and raise expectations of new wonder drugs. In addition getting new drugs to market is more expensive.
The problem is we don’t want to pay for it.
That pill may only be worth 32 cents…but it cost 50 or 60 million to get it on the shelf. What can you charge to recoup?
Consider how many of our medications originate in the jungles of countries like Brazil who don’t actually like us much and who will soon not need our money … Obama and Soros are busy providing with a gargantuan off-shore oil industry.
Aaaaand … missing on that list is the shortage of tiger testicles used in the Chinese ‘wish I had a bigger dick’ medications … to name one bit of medical insanity and there are lots of them that you won’t see listed in pharmaceutical reports.
Oh well … no shortage of medical marijuana … so we go that going for us.
But but….Medicine is a right! Or something.
U. S. pharmaceutical companies have been selling their products at an overall loss–i.e., charging just enough to cover their variable costs but not their fixed costs (which include R & D )–to national socialized health plans, like Canada’s, for decades now. As a result, U. S. customers have been picking up almost the entire tab for the fixed costs of producing medicines (again, including R & D). Left-wing demagogues–otherwise known as Democrats–in the U. S. have been pressing the pharmas to bring their domestic prices down to the levels of their foreign-market, and, especially, Canadian prices, cost accounting arithmetic be damned! On top of it all, the pharmas must cope with all sorts of unpredictable, externally imposed costs resulting from changes in regulation and in the interpretation of existing regulation, fantastic lawsuit awards, etc. The situation really has become something straight out of _Atlas Shrugged_, as Kate reminds us.
Michael Ignatieff:
Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!
Consider: mothballing of North American precursor production facilities; consolidation of pharma, with resultant plant closures; precursor origination in China; consolidation of precursor distribution. Add socialist price ceilings, and voila, you have shortages – probably some artificial, others tangled in the China-USD debt dispute.
But, look at the ingredients in many items in your local grocery store. Similar exposure to precursor shortages – albeit food grade not pharma grade. Nevertheless, disruptions in precursor supply chain mean price inflation and food shortages.
Love your local pharmer.
Rise up! Rise up! Rise up! Rise up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7dD-cnNkA4
Upon reading Atlas Shrugged again, it is amazing how prophetic Ms Rand was. Looks like a Liberal Party of Canada play book.
Thanks Mike, but next time keep off topic links where they belong in Reader Tips.
Is this supposed to be part of a Viagra commercial?
As someone whose life depends on new drugs being developed to stave off my disease, I am resigned to the fact that the FDA’s stupid policies will be the ultimate cause of my death, regardless of what the death certificate says.
Much of life is luck (and showing up) so having the bad luck to need cutting edge medical care just when the “edge” is going dull is just part of life.
It could have been a lot worse. I could be starting my life now instead of ending it at a time when Western societies are starting their final decline. The future will be a lot harder on people than the recent past. Good luck!
The FDA could be replaced tomorrow with voluntary certification / quality assurance standards or other free market mechanisms, but then so could most functions that government has usurped over the last century. Rand was an optimist!
This is why I don’t bother with health insurance, and get my drugs from a vet. Also shampoo by the gallon.
In the last three years my beta blocker has been changed four times due to the pharmacy not being able to obtain the perscribed med.
It has all worked out, because the pharmacists are pros and get me the right replacements, but it went from something simple to pronounce like Monocor to something now that takes up half the label and I have zero chance of remembering, let alone pronounce.
Now that Kate has covered this (again) and people are commenting on it, we’ll see the National Post publish something on the topic in their cat tray liner about a week from now.
Without credit to SDA, of course.
Yeah we seen that in Germany In the 30s. Russia during the Soviets. Now Dr’s don’t even take an oath. Ripe for human experimentation. After all where only embryos on the way to death.
DR Mengales is a fine example of a Relativist Physician.
There are so many examples, but the best is Africa today.
Now that Kate has covered this (again) and people are commenting on it, we’ll see the National Post publish something on the topic in their cat tray liner about a week from now.
Without credit to SDA, of course.
What seems obvious from the list of drugs is that most of them are injectable drugs. Furosamide given iv is essential to deal with someone in congestive heart failure and it’s in short supply?!!
Recently ran into one of the bizarre shortages when I was asked to see a patient with a dystonic reaction from his antipsychotic on the psych ward. Normally this is treated with an injection of benztropine but there was just one vial of benztropine in the whole hospital. Had to resort to benadryl im which sometimes is enough of an anticholinergic and then arguing with the pharmacist over using the remaining vial of benztropine when the benadryl didn’t work.
One thing I suspect may be driving these “shortages” is the ridiculously short expiry dates that are placed on drugs. Why have a large stock of drugs when the FDA will deem them useless due to an arbitrary expiry date. I’ve even seen expiry dates on Rx bottles of Lithium carbonate; the limiting factor here is how long the gelatin capsule lasts as lithium carbonate isn’t changing into anything else.
Seeing Mag sulfate injectable on that list is just bizarre. I guess in the worst case scenario one could just take some MgSO4 snow melter, weigh out the right amount, sterilize it by running it through a 0.2 micron millipore filter and inject it into a patient who needs it. Not pharmaceutical grade, but something we might be reduced to doing if this trend keeps up.
On a somewhat related note, the movie Atlas Shrugged – Part I opened in many cities across the United States yesterday.
Alas, it is not yet showing in Canada.
Iggy said today that medical care is a right and he will insure that we have more doctors.
As we speak they are scouring the jungles of Africa, the sands of Arabia and the slums of India looking for them.
Nearly all of my contemporaries are on daily ‘maintenance drugs’. Not me. I decided long ago that it was a whole lot easier to concentrate on living healthy, eating clean food, drinking clean water and breathing clean air. City people chasing the wasteful, disposable, Great American Lifestyle have brought this plague of slow suicide upon themselves. Tough Shift, Adapt or Die.
Life is a right!
Governments owe it to us!
Knight 99…people just don’t know how right you are.
The “physicians” being imported into this country from the third world are terrible. My wife had difficulty finding a doctor and when she did he had been trained in India and came to Canada through a two year internship in Newfoundland and Labrador. He moved to the mainland 6 years ago after establishing his bona fides.
In the 4 years my wife was seeing him he did not once give her a physical examination. He is a Muslim, which apparently prohibits him from looking at a naked woman. The only thing he prescribed was Tylenol 3 no matter what the ailment.
Needless to say, I reported him to the College of Physicians and Surgeons who appear to be taking a serious interest in this person.
My wife has since found a Canadian trained doctor, but only by luck.
Our aging population is in serious trouble if this is the new norm.
Life is a right!
Governments owe it to us!
Bullfudge. Nobody ‘owes’ you anything.
There is a shortage of doctors today because the Cretian Regime slashed health care funding, and spent taxpayer money for foolish boondoggles like the long-gun registry. Those wasted billions could have helped a lot of medical students with forgivable loans, and bought a lot of MRI machines for example.
I noticed that the bad drugs, the ones with side effects, like Lipitot, Crestor and Zocor were not on that list
Human fear of changing the status quo is the most dangerous part of government takeovers and bad laws. Imagine the gruel we would have to eat and the famine we would risk if we had a ‘food care system’ or the miserable apartments we would be confined to under a ‘housing care system’. Look at how there is never a chronic shortage of vets or dentists and hygienists in Canada. And yet not one political party even hints at questioning the wisdom of government-run health care. People die waiting for treatment, yet the only outcry is for ever more funding for the evil ‘system’ that Canadians must either endure or renounce their citizenship.
My thoughts exactly Revnant – waiting in line for the cull.
You would not believe what is happening in BC with Pharmanet and the mandatory Orwellian named Fair Pharmacare program which very few will qualify for and is anything but fair- merely a feeble excuse to refuse coverage for a very long list of drugs whether you pay out of pocket or receive a not so significant % off after exceeding a deductible that is determined by income level. The program mandatory and based on income means giving MSP permission to review ones income tax returns each year. Worse, if one were register this year the pressure is on from pharmacists and employer health care plan providers to do so)the tax return that determines the qualifying income is from 2 years back not the most recent return which means that if one signed up today the deductible would be based on the 2008 tax year yet MSP would legally have the right to access to your taxreturn information for 2009, 2010, and every year after that til ya die.
And today I read a glowing, cleverly worded news release from MSP stating that a new center is being opened to help those with “complex chronic diseases” (Lyme’s, Chronic fatigue & Fibromyalgia)- in other words the diseases that are on the increase, costly to treat, result in sick days, and are often considered to be all in ones mind or the result of malingering.
This center to screen, treat and investigate sounds great until one carefully reads, including btwn the lines, to discover what that really means is referred patients will have their genome mapped and investigated.
Whatever happened to privacy?
Ministry of Health press release March 30, 2011 – 2011HLTH0019-000315
I hear ya Knight 99:
A neighbor was referred to GP after waiting a year for a family physician who turned out to be a muslim. I gave him a ride to his new doctor’s office that is shared with another doctor that has been in town for the last twenty or so years. Noticed a change the minute I walked in the door.
The muslim doctor required his patients to remove their shoes, despite being clean, or place those disposable slippers over ones footwear.
At first I thought it was for sanitary purposes until I realized the waiting patients of the other doctor did not remove their shoes or wear the disposable slipper covers. What’s more,the slipper covers were obviously being re-used. A sign even instructed patients to place the slippers back into the box they came from when putting on their shoes to leave.
I am only guessing that perhaps he figures his office is holy ground on the level with a mosque. Of course, I could very well be mistaken.
I’m not saying he isn’t a good doctor, time and my neighbor will tell. I just felt very uncomfortable removing my shoes when the other half of those waiting simply wiped and walked on. I couldn’t see the point of removing my shoes when clearly the wait room is shared as is the one hall leading to both the doctors offices.
We also ended up going to the wrong office first because there were two doctors with the identical muslim names; one a psychiatrist and the other a GP.
Forgive my long rant – it sure felt good though.