Comments about ‘Rise in drug shortages raising alarm’

Sounds like drug companies want to raise the price of drugs so they manipulate to supply of drugs. This brings up the practice of GREED against the middle class. Those drug companies have no longer any care about patients just how fast they can make a buck. Even to the point of sending false charges to medicare for their money.

You think it's bad now, wait until that monstrosity of a plan of Hussein Obama's is in full force.

Greed? I don't think so. Imagine you have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to invent, research side effects, and get your drug approved by the FDA and just begin to recover your massive investment when the patent runs out (usually abt 15 years from the time you discover it). A generic version of your drug from China, using your research data without any compensation to you undercuts your price dramatically and you can't sell your drug anymore. What do you think the price will be on your next drug will be, if you get one ready for the market? Yes, its about money,but not greed! Don't believe it? Invent and research and get your own drugs approved by the FDA only to watch your patent run out in a few years.

All too often the FDA is the problem. This fact may be minimized by any amount politically correct propaganda, but extending the authority to 'coordinate' potential outages between manufactures and the FDA will simply further clog an inefficient government bureaucracy. The result will be a greater taxpayer burden, additional expense and paper work for the entire industry (every medical and pharmacy provider), more government, with no improvement in outcome. Somewhere government has forgotten that the end result is supposed to be more and better 'Health Care'.

Tom Smith has it exactly right. Right now the FDA is the problem. I do not work in pharmaceuticals but I have spent my entire career in the medical products business. I can tell you with total certainty that the FDA has lost their marbles in the last few years.

Trust me, DR Hall: those "greedy" pharma companies do not make more money from artificial drug shortages. They would much prefer to make ample supplies because they can make a lot more money that way. A million doses at $75 each is far better than 500k doses at $100 each.

And if the FDA remains in its current state, the problem is going to get nothing but worse. Right now only specialized drugs are affected. In the future it's going to be mainstream drugs and lifesaving devices. In a few years there will be a shortage of pacemakers - imagine how that will affect the lives of countless Americans.

Call your congressman and tell him that the FDA needs reform, and they need it badly.

Please give the "credit" for the shortages to the lawyers who make a fortune suing drug companies because not every drug is the 100% perfect cure for every patient.

Drug companies spend millions (or billions!) to come up with new drugs to treat and cure various diseases. Not every project ends up with what they are looking for, so the development of new drugs is extremely expensive.

While the actual chemicals in a drug may only cost pennies, the research costs (and costs of getting FDA approval) have to be recouped by adding them to the actual cost of raw materials. Patents only protect drugs for a limited time before cheaper "generics" can be sold, and development costs need to be recovered before the patents expire. And, every company deserves a reasonable (or even high) profit for the risks they take in inventing new products.

It is the cost of defending and settling lawsuits that force drug companies to stop production or move elsewhere.

Next time you are sick, see a lawyer, they seem to know all the solutions!

Generic drugs may come from anywhere, which should make them easily available and inexpensive. What is restricting their production?

Last month my wife had to wait for 5 hours while the heads of the clinic and the local pharmaceutical suppliers argued over whether she qualified as a priority recipient of DDAVP which would keep her from bleeding to death under surgery.

The FDA says even with three different makers (the original + two generics) manufacturing delays are up against increased demand to create an acute shortage.

It's a painful mystery.

Price fixing, supply manipulation. Hmm... sounds an awful lot like the petroleum market. Now we just need to add in speculators and everybody can have their hayday.