Getting what you asked for and it's killing people

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If you happen to be in the hospital any time soon for work, well, it's going to be a LOT less pleasant that it used to be.

Wrong drugs.

If you need surgery, ummmmm. You are in in really deep kimchee.

The problem? A real, a severe and an intense shortage of critical drugs hospitals use for patients. I am not kidding.

"Gregory Warner: Some drugs are in such short supply that hospitals are buying them on the gray market, paying 10 times the price for certain cancer medications or anesthetics, or telling doctors to use unfamiliar alternatives. That's led to overdoses, deaths, and in some cases, patients waking up in the middle of surgery."

Got your will made out?

Read the whole piece here  http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/09/23/am-whats-causing-national-drug-shortage/

In case yer not willing to read the whole piece,

"Cohen: They've literally decided it's not profitable enough to make this drug anymore. We're not getting paid enough for it.


"Medicare limits drug prices."

Ya got that? Lemme put this another way - If you support the national health care bill as pushed on the nation by the current thief in chief and the other liars in Washington, then you are getting what you asked for.

What you asked for...

"Oh no, Baker! I didn't ask for this!"

Yes, you did. You demanded government intervention in the health care system with price controls. Since the medicine makers can't generate sufficient income from the sale of these drugs because of government interference, they quit making 'em.

You got what you asked for. That it is not what you wanted is the problem created now, which we all have to deal with.

No doubt many people will point to overseas where there is no paucity of these drugs. G'head. Point.

Have some lead with that dose of antibiotic. Makes it work better.

"In the first instance, more than half of the recent shortages are due to the detection of microbial contamination within medicines borne out of foreign factories" http://www.pharmiweb.com/Features/feature.asp?ROW_ID=1364

Still wanna point to foreign manufacturing processes?

Swear all you want to. You still got what you asked for if you support the national health care bill.

Government doesn't.

The Pharmiweb story ALSO points to government interference as a major problem. "Another cause can be found in an almost unavoidably ugly characteristic of capitalism. Put simply, with generic drugs often commanding unattractively low prices in the market place, many manufacturers simply drop certain drugs from their roster because they don’t draw adequate revenues. In the next instance, third party vendors then purchase the remaining stockpiles of the drug and hoard them on-mass. Subsequently selling them for three to four times their original worth."

Again, this runs right back to government price controls.

I wish you'd stay out of my life unless I invite you in. I promise to stay out of your life unless you invite me in. But that idea doesn't fit the present conservative or liberal values of most of the people in Washington.