Imagine arriving at the pharmacy counter, prescription in hand, but the pharmacist shakes their head. Your critical medication is out of stock — indefinitely.
For a growing number of Americans, this nightmare scenario is reality as drug shortages reach crisis levels.
In this three-part series, we explore a public health emergency hiding in plain sight. Through interviews with health care professionals, patients and industry experts, we look at the human cost of these shortages and explore potential solutions.
We introduce you to doctors improvising with dwindling resources, examine the role of corporate middlemen in a brittle supply chain, and share stories of patients whose lives and treatment have been affected.
We’ll explore how razor-thin profit margins, aging infrastructure and corporate interests have converged – potentially making some prescriptions impossible to fill.
Stories
Part One
Remember the prescription drug shortages from last year? The problem hasn’t gone away
In the first three months of this year, a record number of drugs were in short supply.
Robin Finley was diagnosed with uterine cancer five years ago and has undergone repeated treatments since it reoccured. Now she struggles with the added worry of wondering whether she can even get her chemotherapy drugs, amid a continuing shortage of key medications.
She was halfway through a regimen last year when one of the two drugs she was taking, carboplatin, became scarce. She said that no one involved with her treatment could tell her exactly what had happened.
“It was unsettling and scary, to have a life-saving drug suddenly disappear, without explanation,” said Finley, who lives in Caledonia, New York, south of Rochester. “Without anybody being able to tell me anything because they didn’t know anything.”
Part Two
Corporate interests and an industry of middlemen may be helping to drive the U.S. drug shortage
As a worsening drug shortage leaves patients scrambling, lawmakers are taking aim at the middlemen at the center of the distribution chain.
Part Three
Surging demand leaves many without crucial diabetes, ADHD medications
For many patients, these medications have been life-changing, or even life-saving. Getting their hands on them, however, can be another experience entirely – one some patients describe as a frustrating game of ‘whack-a-mole’.
Shortage Tracker
Use our interactive Drug Shortage Tracker to check if your medication is affected.
Videos
Why do drug shortages happen?
Forty years after the Hatch-Waxman Act, which provided widespread access to affordable generic versions of medications, the market is struggling with persistent shortages brought about partly by low prices.
How does a drug become generic?
Generic drugs currently account for more than 90% of prescriptions and have saved the country almost three trillion dollars over the last decade. Here’s how a brand-name drug typically becomes a generic drug.
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