cancer and critical care drug shortage

[Chubminnow]

Listening to NPR today, found out that some critical care injectable drugs are in very short supply. These are the expensive super new drugs, they are the old stand bys. Why? No profit.

I wonder if that's NO profit or just not the kind of profit the drug companies like seeing? Medicine has seemed to me to be ridiculously sky high for a very VERY long time. Not that I take any worth talking about, but I've seen what my parents have had to pay over the years. All I can say is Lord help us all when we get ill or a little older.

[bassin_bug]

I wonder if that's NO profit or just not the kind of profit the drug companies like seeing? Medicine has seemed to me to be ridiculously sky high for a very VERY long time. Not that I take any worth talking about, but I've seen what my parents have had to pay over the years. All I can say is Lord help us all when we get ill or a little older.

I have a cousin, in his late 30s, who suffers from a rare type of arthritis and requires a special injectable medication that costs $4k per vial which lasts one month. If he doesn't get it, he suffers incredible pain and gets so he is unable to move enough to get up and go to work. He said that his doctor has been unable to find any for him anywhere for this month. He also said he is really scared and the doctor told him he is extremely concerned because the medicine is already in such short supply and laid blame on the pharmaceutical companies.

One of the best and most popular cancer treatment medications is almost out of existence because the manufacturer said they either had, or will soon, stop making it because it is just too expensive to make. I guess things have about reached the point at which a cancer patient will just be allowed to die because their life is no longer valued.