This is sad...and scary! I hope it will be available for you soon or an alternative that is even better.

This has been going on for several years and is getting worse. The number of medications involved is increasing, and the duration of the shortages is getting longer.

Do the drug companies not want to manufacture a drug if there are not big profits for them? Is that the problem? Just wondering.

When hubby was taking his sodium phosphate pills, there were 2 companies that made it. One company stopped, which left 1. They immediately quadrupled the price. Hubby went from paying $120/month to over $400. Pharmaceuticals are after the almighty dollar, and that's all.

Do the drug companies not want to manufacture a drug if there are not big profits for them?

Exactly. However I'd say even "big profits" aren't enough for drug companies. If they cannot make massive, astronomical profits, they are not interested. Or they will collude with a competitor to stop making one drug if the competitor will stop making a different drug, then they can both control the respective markets and reap monopolistic profits.

A cousin was visiting just a couple of days ago, she said she had been diagnosed with some abdominal cancer, that fortuitously doesn't require chemo or radiation or surgery. It can be treated by merely taking a pill. However the drug costs $16000 per month, and she'll have to continue taking forever to prevent the cancer from recurring. (with her insurance the out-of-pocket cost was $3000 / month at one pharmacy, and $49 / month at another.)

A few years ago a friend needed a medication where her out of pocket cost was $2000 per month. When she found out she needed to be on it long term, she started looking into getting it from Canada where pharmaceutical manufacturers, unlike here in the US, do not get to set their own price on drugs. It is government regulated. She did a lot of research and settled on a company that only sell drugs manufactured in Canada or UK where quality control is similar to ours. The difference in cost was jaw dropping. The new price was about $150 per month! Before she started taking it a neighbor of hers, a physician, offered to have it tested in a lab, and it was the exact same thing as the $2000 one! Amazing!

Elmer, really???

Did anyone besides Elmer (and me) read the entire story?

Well, I read the whole article and it seems the underlying problem, at least according to the head of the FDA, is that manufacturer's make a slim profit on drugs that are difficult to produce. So it all comes down to profitability. The patient is our "North Star" What a bunch of hogwash, cash is their North Star.

Eliana, in my post where the drug company increased their cost, is a Canadian one. I'm in Canada. It most certainly isn't government regulated. If that were the case they would not have been allowed to raise the price so dramatically.

Hubby's oral chemo was $3500/month and his monthly bone injections are another $1,000. He's now on monthly radium injections, the last one is tomorrow, which comes in from the Netherlands, at $5,000 a pop. Each dose is formulated on his blood work and weight, so it's patient-specific. It lasts 10 days, so he gets blood work done on Monday and his injection is the following Wednesday.

Jasdip, that is really disappointing news, but as someone familiar with the Canadian system, I'm sure you must be right about it not being government regulated. That is what my friend was told and I have counted on being able to get drugs at those lower prices from Canada should I or someone in my family ever need expensive drug treatment. Best wishes to your hubby!

It's been getting pretty bad lately. Every time I turn around another drug is out of stock and on back order. Some are on back order until next year. It's ridiculous.

"Another man, Barbaro Gonzalez, 62, had shown up at the hospital earlier in the day with chest pains. Mr. Gonzalez said he has frequently visited the hospital to treat his pain and morphine usually does the trick. But this time, doctors had to give him another opioid, fentanyl, which Mr. Gonzalez said didn’t work as well."

I guess I'm just not understanding why someone with recurring chest pain is allowed to "take up space" (my words, not the article's) in the ER on a frequent basis and use up valuable meds. If he is having recurring chest pain, he needs to be treated by a cardiologist to find out the underlying cause/problem and then get that treated (a stent, perhaps?). Or be issued a prescription for nitro.

@ Lindsey, MANY patients under the care of cardiologists, take nitro, and end up in the ED - because the nitro did not relieve their chest pain. The "underlying cause/problem" may be difficult to treat for many reasons. Not all patients with chest pain are candidates for a stent.

This is even beyond the prices, the drugs are not available. "Sorry, I know your wife is pregnant and having a seizure, which is not good for your unborn child, and the best medication to use is magnesium; unfortunately we and the hospitals around us don't have any of it, so we will have to use another drug that may not work as well and has more side effects..." Magnesium is not an expensive, new drug; just a few years ago it was available for ~$5./vial. It has been used to treat eclampsia since the 1920's.