Young, healthy people are not likely to devote much attention to news reports about shortages of medicines.
However, that changes as illnesses and other conditions creep into their lives — a fact of life as people age.
Therefore, the news that the Federal Trade Commission is launching a probe of companies that help buy and distribute the bulk of medicines sold to U.S. hospitals will not attract much healthy Americans’ attention in the months ahead.
Not so regarding Americans who lately or in the not-so-distant past have dealt with the uncertainties and stress associated with short supplies of the medicines they depend upon to keep them alive or control their illnesses.
Those uncertainties and that stress are inconsistent with the situation that should prevail in this most advanced of all countries.
Commendably, the FTC has committed itself to unraveling the inconsistencies and injecting transparency into a procurement and maintenance process upon which few Americans reflect until they are affected directly by something not being available.
Hopefully, what the FTC uncovers will help end medicine shortages or reduce them dramatically, when stacked against supply records compiled perhaps a decade or two ago.
According to a report in the Feb. 15 Wall Street Journal, the FTC “is exploring whether the companies that broker drug purchases for hospitals, along with middlemen that ship the medicines, have misused their market power to push down prices of generic drugs so much that some manufacturers can’t profit and have stopped production, causing shortages.
The way the Journal described it is that the inquiry will be shining a spotlight on a little-noticed corner of the drug-supply chain — “but one that can have an outsize impact on stores of critical medicines.”
According to the Feb. 15 Journal report, insufficient supplies of what it said were critical chemotherapies forced doctors to ration supplies last year. That situation intensified attention on what were described as periodic shortages of a number of generic drugs.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patients suffering from serious conditions harbor the same opinion.
The young, healthy people of today will grow to appreciate the work being done now as they grow older and experience medical challenges their parents and grandparents have encountered, or still are encountering.
The creep of illnesses and other conditions into their lives is virtually inevitable.
Today's breaking news and more in your inbox
Shortage Of Medicine Needs Probe
4
0
08.03.2024
Young, healthy people are not likely to devote much attention to news reports about shortages of medicines.
However, that changes as illnesses and other conditions creep into their lives — a fact of life as people age.
Therefore, the news that the Federal Trade Commission is launching a probe of companies that help buy and distribute the bulk of medicines sold to U.S. hospitals will not attract much healthy Americans’ attention in the months ahead.
Not so regarding Americans who lately or in the not-so-distant past have dealt with the uncertainties and stress associated with short supplies of the medicines they depend........
© The Post-Journal
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
