The Details:
Most of what to report are big news items, but it might be good to bring them together to see how pharmacy may be impacted in the coming months.
First off, starting even last year, drug shortages continue. Debate continues over the reasons, and likely it is a combination of factors. One of those factors may be that as demand exceeds supply, regulations do not allow production to be increased at the same rate. The FDA sees the mass illegal production of medication and thus tightens its demands on all production. Coupled with this may be the 2003 Medicare drug law, which limits price increases on drugs to doctors and hospitals. This in turn makes it so producers have to make a profit by means of quantity, but if expansion is sluggish at best, it leads to a deficit in supply.
Being the huge problem that it is, it has been addressed politically on a number of fronts. On October 31, President Obama's We Can't Wait speech addressed the drug shortage issue by commanding the FDA to look into the problem and make any form of price gouging illegal. Congress also enacted two bills, similar in nature H.R. 2245 and S. 296 to also make it a federal directive to address drug shortages.
Great Britain is also having drug shortages seemingly because the US is importing more to meet its shortfalls.
Finally, from Thanksgiving week, we have found out the Super Committee failed to come to a budget deduction agreement. This would mean an across-the-board budget cuts for all areas of government spending. Given that healthcare is one of the governments biggest money expenditures, it is definitely going to impact pharmacy.
My Take:
Regarding the drug short fall, it still needs to be determined what exactly the issue is. If it is FDA stickiness, preventing expanding production, this would have to be an area looked at to be fixed. Obviously we want strict guidelines on medication, but if it is not improving medication quality and only increasing a burden on production, makes sense to relax it.
The President's speech and Congress bills are good, but really are easy political bandwagons, which may not really address the issue. I don't see these bills not passing.
The Super Committee failure may be unfortunate, but again, was probably the easiest move politically to do. It is easier to commit the crime of omission in politics, because then you blame the other guy. Sadly though this means both the more efficient and less efficient expenditures will be cut equally. And given that many talk about the $1.2 trillion the Super Committee looked at as not even being the $4 trillion that is needed, we're on the way for some rocky traveling.
