Topic: Fed-created shortage of ADHD drug Adderall

[Pandora]

Headline reads "Charlotte" suffering from shortage, but I'm sure this is going on all over the country.

The DEA said most of the time it boils down to the supply and demand.

Each year, the government sets a limit for the amount of the chemical found in Adderall and once the manufacturer hits that, they can’t make any more until the next year.

I shouldn't be boggled, but I am.  There is NOTHING, the Feds don't have control over it seems.

[LadyVirginia]

I hate stories like this.  No where does it tell us why the fed sets limits on the chemical.  We're to accept it just does.

Then the observation from that woman that other options might be useful  Well, then if that's so why was the drup prescribed in  the first place???

Perhaps this is why Charlotte police need riot gear.

[Pandora]

Heh.  Perhaps it is, but I suspect the shortage is country-wide, not just in Charlotte.

[Alphabet Soup]

Our society, or culture and our way of life, is a delicate interweaving of semi-associative interests. In some ways it is remarkably resilient - just witness how we come back after a flood or tornado (New Orleans need not apply). In other ways it is fragile as hell and vulnerable to quixotic circumstance and calamity. Any that's without artifically stressing things.

When one sets out to "fundamentally transform America" without a clue as to WTF he's doing and zero regard to the implications and consequences of his actions there is no end to the chaos and havoc one can cause.

By 'one' I obviously mean "Duh Won" since no one else in the room is stupid or malevolent enough to do the craps he's doing.

[Glock32]

Actually there is something of a hidden crisis in the medical community pertaining to drug shortages. A lot of these drugs are critical, life saving drugs that were once ubiquitous. On another forum I go to, one of the contributors is a hospital physician and he talks about in detail, and apparently the FDA now operates a website clearing house giving the latest daily figures on what is in short supply and suggested alternatives. He says many of these alternatives are not as good, and patient care is absolutely affected as a result.

The ultimate cause is government regulations that have removed profit motivations from the manufacture of established, generic drugs. The pharmaceutical companies simply curtail or eliminate production of unprofitable lines, and the result has been shortages of basic medications that should never be a consideration in any First World hospital. I'll try to dig up some links about this situation and post them here.

[Libertas]

"The ultimate cause is government regulations that have removed profit motivations from the manufacture of established, generic drugs."

Damn straight, G!  I've been railing about this and warning people for years.  This all began to unravel under Slick Willie, it was then that the Dem's really ratcheted up their demonizing of drug companies that later led to stupid stunts like Mark Dayton driving old folks to Canada to buy drugs.  Nobody in the fothermucking press bothered to ask why certain drugs are cheaper in Canada or give one damn about the company that spent millions developing and testing that drug only to see it offered to any maker to produce generically at lower prices once the patent is allowed to expire!

I cannot recall specific drugs either, but I recall reading several stories over the past decade that documented why manufacture was dropped due to crushed margins.

But of course the government and the morons on the Left will say big evil pharmaceutical companies should be able to afford to sell some drugs for less than cost.  Problem is some turns into many and soon you have no drugs being manufactured.  But Leftists think everything can be given away without anybody every being hurt, so trying to reason with that ilk is like throwing a turtle up into the air and telling him to fly!

 

[LadyVirginia]

People don't understand the pharma companies employ thousands of people and that it's expensive to develop new drugs and that it takes years.  I guess at first glance it doesn't make sense.  Someone takes 2 drugs and one costs 20 cents and the other is 2 dollars a pill.  But the cheaper one probably has 100 million people buying it and the other was developed for a more specialized problem.

When my daughter was a baby she had to take a med once a month that costs $1000 a dose.  A few years later my husband was on a med that cost $3000 a month.  Both of these were specialized drugs not available as generic and probably wouldn't be as they were designed for a select population. And generics  for general, common drugs aren't always the answer anyway.  One of our  kids is allergic to penicillin and so we don't get to buy the $4 walmart prescription.  We buy the $80 one. I don't want the cheap drugs.  I want the ones that work for my family.

(Not a pharma company but---My husband had a client years ago that was a company that had been in existence for 10 years and its sole purpose was to develop a machine that would revolution the treatment of kidney disease.  Ten years and they were still working to get to market.  Should they give it away when it's ready?)

I don't like some of the things pharma companies do but recovering R & D isn't one of them.

[Glock32]

Another reason many drugs are so expensive in the USA is because in the foreign socialized markets, the prices of drugs are tightly regulated. The end result is that the manufacturers are left trying to recoup their investment in one market -- ours. We effectively subsidize the artificially low price of drugs in those countries, while the uninformed have the nerve to lecture us on how superior their systems are. It's not unlike our defense budget subsidizing the social welfare states of Western Europe for decades. They rested comfortably under our defense umbrella, and all the money they would have otherwise spent on defense was redirected into the nanny state. And again, the uninformed have the nerve to lecture us on how superior such an arrangement is.

[LadyVirginia]

Another reason many drugs are so expensive in the USA is because in the foreign socialized markets, the prices of drugs are tightly regulated. The end result is that the manufacturers are left trying to recoup their investment in one market -- ours. We effectively subsidize the artificially low price of drugs in those countries, while the uninformed have the nerve to lecture us on how superior their systems are. It's not unlike our defense budget subsidizing the social welfare states of Western Europe for decades. They rested comfortably under our defense umbrella, and all the money they would have otherwise spent on defense was redirected into the nanny state. And again, the uninformed have the nerve to lecture us on how superior such an arrangement is.

Oh, yeah.  I'd forgotten about that.

 So apparently it's more than big pharma trying to screw us? 

/

[Libertas]

Another excellent point G!

We should be telling Europe to start producing drugs we need at subsidized prices, let them eat the difference for the next 50 years!

Oh, end send them an invoice for a half decade of security and we'll forgive that Marshall Plan tab!

[charlesoakwood]

Another aspect of opening foreign markets are the drugs manufactured by American companies
with American patents in places such as India, Germany, and Turkey.  The same drugs sold here
are manufactured there at a much lower cost than the cost of manufacture here.  That's a tax/regulation
goose Uncle Sam wants to keep at home.