http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027572075Oh my.
First up, the sour-assed old sow:
cali (107,814 posts) Fri Jan 29, 2016, 05:03 PM
Shortages of vital drugs, rationing are the new normal in American medicine
— In the operating room at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Brian Fitzsimons has long relied on a decades-old drug to prevent hemorrhages in patients undergoing open-heart surgery. The drug, aminocaproic acid, is widely used, cheap and safe. “It never hurt,†he said. “It only helps.â€
Then manufacturing issues caused a national shortage. “We essentially did military-style triage,†said Dr. Fitzsimons, an anesthesiologist, restricting the limited supply to patients at the highest risk of bleeding complications. Those who do not get the once-standard treatment at the clinic, the nation’s largest cardiac center, are not told. “The patient is asleep,†he said. “The family never knows about it.â€
In recent years, shortages of all sorts of drugs — anesthetics, painkillers, antibiotics, cancer treatments — have become the new normal in American medicine. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists currently lists inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, for reasons ranging from manufacturing problems to federal safety crackdowns to drugmakers abandoning low-profit products. But while such shortages have periodically drawn attention, the rationing that results from them has been largely hidden from patients and the public.
At medical institutions across the country, choices about who gets drugs have often been made in ad hoc ways that have resulted in contradictory conclusions, murky ethical reasoning and medically questionable practices, according to interviews with dozens of doctors, hospital officials and government regulators.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/drug-shortages-forcing-hard-decisions-on-rationing-treatments.html?_r=0
<<<since becoming an adult more years ago than I care to mention, has always insisted, when pharmaceuticals are necessary, that they (a) be the oldest drug of that sort on the market and (b) in the mildest dosage possible that's still medically effective.
The oldest because the side-effects are better known, no rude surprises, and the mildest because, well, one shouldn't overload the body with alien substances.
<<<pays an average of $4-10 per prescription, not enough to bother keeping track of and bothering the insurance company about.
Turbineguy (21,035 posts) Fri Jan 29, 2016, 05:08 PM
1. Do the drug companies know
that people who survive due to cheap drugs might live to require expensive drugs?
cali (107,814 posts) Fri Jan 29, 2016, 05:09 PM
2. They aren't worried about their market
Not while they got primitives like the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive gobbling down them pills as if fistfuls of popcorn.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN (12,994 posts) Fri Jan 29, 2016, 05:34 PM
4. Why I've been saying for years we need a gov't run pharmaceutical company
to make all the necessary but not as profitable drugs that other companies aren't willing to make.
