Sen. has plan to fight drug shortages

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - It's being called a prescription for disaster - a nationwide shortage of life-saving drugs. New York's Senior Senator came to Buffalo Thursday with a plan that would ensure no patient goes untreated.

Senator Charles Schumer spoke at Roswell Park Cancer Institute about the difficulty hospitals face in finding needed drugs that are in short supply.

"Hundreds of hours in manpower just to find the drug. In other words, if they know they need a drug and they can't get it from their usual supply, they have to put somebody on the phone to search and search for that drug. And then, if they can't find that, they use a substitute that often isn't quite as good," said Sen. Schumer.

In 2011, there were 267 instances of standard medications suddenly becoming unavailable - that's an increase of 20 percent over last year.

Roswell Park president Dr. Donald Trump said, "Some of the drugs that we're talking about have been shown to extend life and aren't available; some of the medications used to make surgery easier and more tolerable for the patient, or pain relief after surgery better - those drugs aren't available. So these are real disruptions in quality care."

And it's likely to get worse.

Roswell Park chief of pharmacy services Jonathan Adams said, "We've had one manufacturer that's completely shut down; I think that's going to contribute to it getting worse. We haven't seen that impact yet, but I don't see any other way that it won't make it worse."

Sen. Schumer is proposing legislation that will require pharmaceutical companies to warn the FDA if they plan to discontinue a drug.

"If another company knew that six months from now Merck was going to discontinue this drug, they might get into producing it and there'd be no shortage," argued Sen. Schumer.

It would also make price gouging a federal crime.

Sen. Schumer said, "If you try to corner the market on silver, it's now a crime, but if you try to corner the market on epinephrine, it's not a crime. It should be."

Drug shortages are also forcing hospitals to delay or cancel some research trials aimed at improving treatment. So not only do we have difficulty getting patients the medicines they need today, and drugs which may be better won't become available as soon as they should.