A serious shortage of medical drugs exists in America

[Warph]

Included in hard to get items are common drugs like lidocaine for localized pain relief, drugs for heart failure, diabetes, morphine. Nitroglycerine for heart angina is also in very short supply.


NY Times:
From rural ambulance squads to prestigious hospitals, health care workers are struggling to keep vital medicines in stock because of a drug shortage crisis that is proving to be stubbornly difficult to fix. Rationing is just one example of the extraordinary lengths being taken to address the shortage, which health care workers say has ceased to be a temporary emergency and is now a fact of life. In desperation, they are resorting to treating patients with less effective alternative medicines and using expired drugs. The Cleveland Clinic has hired a pharmacist whose only job is to track down hard-to-find drugs.


Why?  Because manufacturers are closing down and ingredients are becoming harder to get as the US moves closer and closer to third world status.  Ineffectual and bad drugs are being used to fill in the gap.


NY Times:
"Regardless of the cause, the drug shortage has forced the F.D.A. to make some tough choices, including allowing manufacturers to sell drugs that, if it were not for the crisis, most likely would have been recalled. Last year, for example, the agency allowed the manufacturer American Regent to sell a drug used during chemotherapy that was found to contain glass particles. Doctors and nurses were instructed to filter the drug, sodium thiosulfate, before administering it to patients." reports the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/business/drug-shortages-are-becoming-persistent-in-us.html?hp&_r=0

[Bullwinkle]

      We are also buying drugs from European manufacturers that would normally not pass FDA standards. Hospital pharmacists are having to prepare many common drugs from scratch, if they can get the ingredients.

[Diane Amberg]

 Very true. Another problem has to do with short expiration dates. Many drugs are good for much longer than the date says, some for up to three years longer, but are kept short so they appear to have to be repurchased much sooner,hence a bigger profit.