WASHINGTON — Unprecedented drug shortages are threatening the lives of cancer patients and other seriously ill people, and the Obama administration’s plan to tackle them is but a small step toward solving a complex problem.
President Barack Obama ordered the Food and Drug Administration on Monday to take new steps to send out early warnings about looming shortages and try to avert them.
“Even though the FDA has successfully prevented an actual crisis, this is one of those slow-rolling problems that could end up resulting in disaster for patients and health care facilities all over the country,” Obama said.
There’s already a crisis in the eyes of many frustrated doctors and hospitals who are scrambling for supplies of medicines ranging from common chemotherapies, to anesthetics used in surgery, to the electrolytes that are crucial to IV feeding in intensive care. Fifteen deaths have been blamed on shortages. Patients have had treatments delayed, had surgeries canceled or had to use second-choice medications. Hospitals are reporting price-gouging — such as a drug that usually costs $26 being offered for $1,200.
Sometimes, “you have to look the patient in the eye and say, ‘I can’t treat you. I certainly can’t treat you the way I meant to treat you,’ ” said Dr. James Speyer, medical director of the clinical cancer center at New York University Langone Medical Center.
“That’s a terrible thing to have to do, and it’s happening across the country,” added Speyer, who said Obama’s action is important but doesn’t address one key part of the problem — drug profits. “Unfortunately, we’re going to be living with the problems of these shortages for some time.”
It’s unthinkable to patients who find themselves caught in the mess.
“How in the United States of America could critical lifesaving or life-prolonging drugs be in short supply?” asked Jay Cuetara, 49, of San Francisco, who said chemotherapy to hold back his advanced cancer recently was delayed by a week when his hospital ran out and couldn’t get more. He joined Obama in the Oval Office on Monday as the president signed an executive order directing the FDA’s next steps.
