The older we get it seems the more pills and such that we must consume to protect our health….that is a sore spot because drug companies are raising prices and playing with the distribution of said drugs and now we have a leader that does not give a screaming turd about our struggles to pay for these necessities for good health…..
The United States, despite being the richest country in the world and a biopharmaceutical powerhouse, has long struggled with drug shortages. At any given time, up to 100 or more — sometimes many more — drugs are not readily available to American patients, largely because drug manufacturing operates with very little slack that leaves it vulnerable to disruptions. Sometimes, these are specialty drugs for, say, cancer patients who have certain genetics — potentially devastating for those individuals. Other times, as with the recent ADHD medication shortages, it can involve widely prescribed drugs with health impacts that can affect millions of people.
There are moments when these shortages can’t be helped. As I wrote in 2022, the pandemic’s supply chain disruption was the kind of natural emergency that creates unavoidable, acute drug shortages. Americans found it harder to find drugs like Tamiflu or inhalers with albuterol because the manufacturers were having a harder time getting their hands on the raw ingredients for those medicines, which can come from all over the world.
Drug shortages are usually accidental. A pandemic. A factory machine needs repair. Ingredients become tainted. But this time, it would be engineered.
The potential for disruption is enormous: China, which this week has been hit with a 10 percent across-the-board tariff, is the largest supplier of drug or drug ingredients to the US. Pharmaceutical drugs and their components are still the single largest American import from around the world, as longtime health care journalist Merrill Goozner wrote on Monday.
Generic drugmakers, which produce 90 percent of the prescription drugs in the US and often depend on Chinese chemical imports, don’t have easy recourse. It will be difficult for them to raise prices to make up for the additional tariff costs — there’s a good reason for that, but it has the potential to fuel shortages with a trade war afoot.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/398161/trump-tariffs-china-prescripton-drugs-medicine-shortage
I guess we should start worrying about the availability of our meds in the near future.
Then there is the uncertainty of the Trump admin actually helping us out with lowering prices of these drugs….think again….this op-ed looks at the possibility….
You’d think that President Donald Trump would have shown a little more empathy to senior citizens. He ties the record for being the oldest candidate elected to the Oval Office — with former President Joe Biden of all people. He’ll be an octogenarian by the time he leaves office, so you may be of the opinion that he’d look out for his elderly peers.
Apparently, not.
Medicare recipients, and the families working hard to support them, just aren’t Trump’s people.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order overturning the two-year effort to give Medicare recipients access to more than 100 drugs for $2 a month. The Medicare $2 Drug List Model included generic drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and other common ailments many elderly face. No matter. With a swipe of a pen, Trump ended the program to, in his words, ” … to deliver emergency price relief.” Go figure.
Speaking of tariffs…..
Your local pharmacy might be the next front in Donald Trump’s trade war.
The president has in recent weeks promised to impose tariffs on all foreign-made medications, a move intended to encourage drug companies to return more of their manufacturing to the US.
In the meantime, the healthcare industry is already bracing itself for the president’s new 10% levy on goods from China, where much of the globe’s pharmaceutical production is based. Drugmakers and hospitals have said they could increase costs, push some generics into short supply, and hurt Americans’ access to treatments, including cancer and heart medicines.
Independent healthcare and trade experts told Yahoo Finance that, even though there are good policy reasons to encourage more US pharma manufacturing, they believed the tariffs could backfire. Slapping taxes on pills made in other countries might push prices higher without making it worthwhile to bring back many factories, they warned. Worse, it could exacerbate already chronic shortages of generic drugs by driving some companies out of the market entirely.
So be prepared for your health costs is about to become more expensive and will remain so until someone in DC cares about you…..if ever….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”