by Yves Smith at naked capitalism
Yves here. Evidence is mounting that the US and other advanced economies are failing to provide adequate levels of what have come to be considered essential services, like reliable power, clean water, and now, adequate medical care. Rural hospitals are closing. Diabetes drugs are so wildly overpriced that many Americans try to get by on low or intermittent doses. Primary care doctors are too few.
Covid supply chain disruptions hit many categories of medications, from Adderall to some antibiotics to children’s Tylenol. As this article describes, the shortage of cancer medications is a potentially lethal threat to many patients. Yet despite experts warning for some time of US dependence on Chinese (and to a lesser degree Indian) active ingredients and end products, the US has not done anything to build buffers.
One simple idea to investigate is testing the shelf life of products and authorizing pharmacies to sell them after their official sell by date up for a specified period when a drug is designated as in short supply. My understanding is that most medications retain their potency for roughly a full year after their sell by date. It would presumably not be hard or costly to test potency for at least pretty widely used medications. This could be an important stop-gap until longer-term solutions are put in place.
By Arthur Allen, KFF Health News Senior Correspondent, previously worked at Politico, and before that, a freelance writer for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Lingua Franca magazine, The New Republic, Slate, and Salon, and had worked for The Associated Press for 13 years. Originally published at KFF Health News
On Nov. 22, three FDA inspectors arrived at the sprawling Intas Pharmaceuticals plant south of Ahmedabad, India, and found hundreds of trash bags full of shredded documents tossed into a garbage truck. Over the next 10 days, the inspectors assessed what looked like a systematic effort to conceal quality problems at the plant, which provided more than half of the U.S. supply of generic cisplatin and carboplatin, two cheap drugs used to treat as many as 500,000 new cancer cases every year.
Seven months later, doctors and patients are facing the unimaginable:…
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