Drug shortages in USA leading to price gouging, possible safety issues

As health care providers in the USA deal with record rates of drug shortages, some “gray market" vendors are putting profits ahead of patients, offering drugs desperately needed at exorbitant price mark-ups. And in certain cases, the drugs being offered may be counterfeit, stolen, ineffective or unsafe.

A Premier health care alliance analysis, of unsolicited sales offers made by gray market vendors to hospitals, shows that the average mark-up for shortage drugs was 650%. The highest single recorded mark-up offered was 4,533% for a drug used to treat high blood pressure. Normally priced at $25.90, the offered price in this case was $1,200.

A record 211 medications became scarce in 2010 - three times the number in 2006 - and at least 89 new shortages have been recorded through the end of March, putting the nation on track for far more scarcities, according to a report earlier this year by the Washington Post. Figures from the US Food and Drug Administration were slightly less alarming, showing that 178 drugs were in short supply in 2010 versus 61 in 2005 (The Pharma Letter May 4). The FDA more recently stated that there were now 246 drugs in short supply.