I just had one of those “You’ve got to be kidding me” moments after reading this news article by Reuters, “FDA identified 20 drugs with shortage risks due to coronavirus outbreak.”
It was this part that jumped out at me.
NEW YORK (Reuters)
“U.S. officials raised concerns this week about the security of the U.S. drug supply chain in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in China, where a significant portion of the ingredients used to make prescription drugs is manufactured.
Around 88 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used in drugs for the U.S. market were manufactured overseas in 2018, according to the FDA. About 14 percent of the API for U.S. drugs in that year were produced in China, the FDA said.”Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Dan Grebler
We don’t even have USA made active ingredients in our drugs anymore! I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me that the stuff in my medications wasn’t “made in the USA”. I guess in my mind I figured we still made the medications, but probably got the fillers from overseas. Wrong. Only about 12% of the active ingredients in our drugs are made here.
How in the world are we charged so much for medications? The pharmaceutical companies have even farmed out making the drugs they sell us! The Federal Government funds much of the research to create new drugs at universities, which then the pharmaceutical companies get to patent and sell (and the Federal Government doesn’t even get a cut of the profits).
Now, because of the coronavirus, we find out this bit of information. The active ingredients and jobs that come from all the money spent here in the US are mostly found overseas. Gee, think that a disaster of some type might cause a problem for the millions of us who need certain medications to live?
I guess in the end it really shouldn’t surprise me, but it burns me up just thinking about it.
