Scarcity sends the sick scrambling for medication

[no_hypocrisy]

Dan Schiavello shouldn’t be alive.

Dan Schiavello receives treatment for leiomyosarcoma cancer with the drug doxil at Eastchester Center for Cancer Care. Due to a shortage of the drug, Schiavello has resorted to calling area treatment centers to see if they have any in supply. His doctors expected his Stage 4 cancer to kill him long ago. He’s survived because of a chemotherapy drug that has attacked the tumors in his body, shrinking most and even eliminating some.

But now, that drug is no longer being made.

He has been scrambling to find Doxil, the medication that has been his lifeline the last five years. He spends hours every day on the phone and on his computer searching for a dose and has traveled hundreds of miles for an infusion. He has found himself in a world where people are willing to put a price on his survival, like the pharmacist who offered to sell him a dose from a secret stockpile for $14,000 in cash.

-more-

http://www.northjersey.com/news/national/DRUG0311.html?c=y&page=1

[Uben]

1. Nice pharmacist, huh?

Greedy bastard. I hope the pharmacist someday needs somebody's help and they say "Sure, that'll be $10 million, or you can die."

[BlueIris]

3. That pharmacist should be in jail.

At minimum, in a different career, where he does not have any control of anyone's health.

[Warpy]

2. They just hired a bunch of business adminisration jerks

who think "strict inventory control" is the way to higher profits. While this works out pretty well for auto parts and ipods, it works very poorly when it's something that's keeping people alive like medication. You can wait 6 months for a new ipod. You can't wait 6 months to continue your chemo.

I often think the best way to improve health care from the inside out is to fire everybody with a business degree. Get rid of the bean counters, first, the guys who want the company to reduce inventory so sharply that they are starting to create artificial shortages and kill people.

There is no reason for this except b-school theory.

Manufacturing this stuff with a cushion for sudden sharp demand is how it was done successfully for over a century. The new breed of b-school eager beaver has stopped that and created a monster.