I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason most journalists support socialized medicine is the very same reason they’ve barely mentioned the severe problem of continuing drug shortages.
[Patient is hooked up to the monitor. Wide complex bradycardia. Pressure 60/40. Dialysis graft is noticed in his arm.]
“Dialysis patient. He may be acidotic and hyperkalemic. Give him an amp of bicarb STAT.”
“Sorry doc, we’re out. There’s a national shortage.”
“Keep that fluid bolus going. Let’s start some Levophed on him to raise his blood pressure.”
“Sorry, doc. We don’t have any of that either. National shortage.”
“Well let’s at least give him some Vancomycin in case he’s septic.”
“I’d like to, but I can’t. That’s on national shortage, too.”
“Well, he’s not responding very well. At least let’s get him intubated. Can someone push some Rocuronium?”
“Don’t have that, either. National shortage.”
“Vecuronium?”
“Nope. That’s out, too.”
“Pavulon”
“Nope. National shortage.”
They aren’t sick.
That is quite the list, all that ingenuity and human intellectual capital and no money.
Doctor to patient: You can die now, cause of death to be noted as ‘supervised neglect’; due to governmental psychosis.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
I love it. Drugs, oil, eggs, you name it. Now I’m just waiting for the sheeple to blame “Big Pharma” or “Big Eggs” for price gouging.
At least I don’t work in Ontario.
On top of those same drug shortages we have here, with McGuinty’s “green” energy policies they’ll be out of electricity to even pace or defibrillate.
I have no inside information on this issue, but I’ve paid closer attention than most for over a decade. I would be prepared to bet dollars to donuts that the “drug shortage” here is just as legitimate as the Enron-induced “energy shortage” in California and else where in the late 90s early 2000s….for the same reason (hey we can do this!). Am I the only one who sees this parallel?
This is the problem I am currently facing. Oh well there is always chloroform and poultices.
Peter the reason why there are shortages is because the prices are regulated by the state. As costs rise it becomes less and less profitable to make drugs so to save money those wickedly evil pharmaceutical companies stop making the drugs. This is what the socialists want as far as I can tell since it means that pharmaceutical companies no longer make “record profits” off the sick. Problem solved.
My wife is ill and suffering. The only test that will tell what she is suffering from is a colonoscopy. Because her condition has been upgraded to an emergency, she has been moved up in the order for the procedure. June 26th is the date she’s been given. I agree, our medical system is one of the wonders of the world unless … you get sick and actually require treatment.
Received a liver transplant 3 years ago on April Fools day. (Thank-you God)
The only time my bedding was changed during the eight days was when I groaned, got up, and did it myself.
Heard no end of whining and bitching from staff during my stay.
That being said, there are still some Florence Nightingale nurses. Although, most seemed to act like they were doing the patients a favour.
Give me back half my tax dollars and allow private health care. I’ll get my own coverage and go to a clinic that even if they dont care about me they will at least care about making money so will provide top notch service.
Sorry, peter, but the shortage is real. Sandoz was forced to reconfigure much of their production line in order to meet US regulatory requirements and there was a fire at the Quebec plant to boot. To their credit, they seem to be doing the best they can under the circumstances, and the AHS is trying to obtain supplies from alternate providers overseas. So far, it’s pretty much business as usual for what the patient sees, at least in our neck of the woods, but that could change.
This particular shortage of Sandoz and injectable drugs is IMHO due to large group purchasing organizations (GPOs) which negotiate prices for their members, hospitals and hospital corporations.
All hospitals in Ontario are forced to join a GPO in order to get cheap generic intravenous meds and as a result, other provinces were caught up as well. In a small country like Canada, there are only 3: HealthPro which has 85% of the market, SSI (in quebec) and MedBuy (primarily in the Atlantic provinces). As a result, over time, competition decreases and contracts are awarded on a long term basis to a single supplier. Combine that with just-in-time inventory and what could possibly go wrong?
Note, the article quoted comes from the US where this practice is even more ingrained and has been going on for years.
Manufacturing sterile injection drugs, some of which are heat and light sensitive is especially difficult and requires some highly skilled proficiencies. If not, those drug cartels would have made sterile opioid drugs long time ago….
When my four children were born, there was no government healthcare. We had insurance, the cost was reasonable, drugs were reasonably priced, and hospital care and emrgency sytems worked well.
End of story.
No offence to those who see things different, but the “regulator” is captured by those they ostensibly regulate. The barriers to entry are the product of decades of lobbying by the regulated (pharma), who spend more on that activity than virtually every other industry but high finance…and gee aren’t things in that industry working out just swell?
The FDA in the US must approve any new plants beforwe they can produce pharmaceuticals; that is they act as cartel manager for production.
And the efficiency of the FDA is legendary. Obama will make the problem worse by putting a greater cost squeeze on the insurers, and indeed the entire supply chain providing any and all health care products and services, including pharmaceuticals.
This statist induced “drug shortage” is showing me the degree to which asinine regulations have come into existence.
There’s nothing hard about making up iv drugs – what is hard is complying with regulations which have no medical justification. As one of the posters on the referenced site noted; all one needs to do to get some sodium bicarb solution is to dissolve baking soda in water and run it through a 0.22 micron filter to sterilize it — something I used to do routinely back in my pharmacology research days.
Didn’t realize how little pharmacists are being taught until this “drug shortage” hit. I asked the pharmacist that comes to our rounds if she could mix up some iv morphine and she said she wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to. We’re being asked to make do without iv opiates if possible. Thus far I haven’t yet had to write orders asking the nurse to provide a patient with a hard surface, a razor blade and a 4 mg tablet of hydromorphone with instructions on how to crush the tablet finely and then snort it. Almost as good as iv hydromorphone and 4 mg hydromorphone tablets are nice because they have very little filler. The morphine SR capsules are full of little ethylcellulose coated balls of morphine which, with a bit of patience, can also be crushed and snorted thus replacing iv morphine. I’ve had lots of calls from the ward about the sublingual drug orders I’ve written for “oral” drug preparations. The pharmacists don’t know how to make suppositories either but they’re playing at being doctors now writing extensive notes in patients charts about suggested changes to the patients medications. I’ve had to take some pharmacists aside to tell them that if they want to be doctors, go to medical school but until such time that they graduate, go back to counting out pills and stop writing notes in my patients charts.
The latest drug that is in short supply is iv thiamine and I don’t think the hospital was prepared for the latest recommendation for prevention of Wernicke’s encephalopathy in alcoholics – 500 mg thiamine iv tid for 5 days instead of the 100 mg iv once daily that is part of our outdated alcohol withdrawal protocol. Turns out oral thiamine isn’t that well absorbed orally, but then people with Korsakoff’s can be placed in nursing homes and statists would consider their total inability to form new memories a feature not a bug. Besides, think of how many government jobs a single Korsakoff’s patient generates.
Peter, the “barrier to entry” is called a PATENT. It costs a lot of damn money to develop those wickedly evil, profit driven cures for diseases. If only those evil rich capitalist bastard drug company presidents would just stop trying to make a buck for a second we’d have all those incredible medical advances such as the ones which came out of the soviet union… oh wait a minute what advances were those again?
The demand for drugs and medical care for the baby boomer generation has been well known decades.
Call me cynical if you want, but at least look at the facts. Each health authority across the country are forced to pay ridiculous amounts of money to offset C02. The same goes for school districts, yet the CBC propaganda machine is allowed to continue to suck $1.2 billion out of the economy to push the enviro-nuts agenda.
The centralizing of health authorities and school districts needed to occur first to ensure all cities and counties could pay up by pooling their resources.
If something doesn’t make at least a tiny bit of sense, something else is going on.
What’s happening is nothing short of gross negligence at best, at worst it’s an enviro-nut and government social program and tax saving plan dream come true – culling by negligence.
Will save a ton of money on pension payouts and disability deductions and assistance. That coupled with increasing the age of pension eligibility (except for MP’s) will save tax dollars. These sorts of ideas, along with assisted suicide and euthanasia appeal to the under 30 occupy types who can not yet fathom that they themselves will age one day.
There is method present in all this madness.