Pharmacy Ties To Drug Shortages Probed By U.S. Lawmakers

By Anna Yukhananov

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers are investigating three pharmacies in Maryland and North Carolina accused of passing critical drugs in short supply directly to wholesalers, who are likely to profit from the scarcity of life-saving medicines, rather than to the patients that need them.

Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the influential House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, began a probe in October to discover why certain companies were peddling cancer drugs at more than a hundred times their normal cost, while hospitals and patients were scrambling to receive any.

The Food and Drug Administration has said the number of drugs in short supply, which include cancer, anesthesiology and nutrition medications, had risen to 220 in 2011 from 56 in 2006, the year a clear trend started emerging.

Many of the drugs are generic, sterile injectable medications, such as cytarabine, a key treatment for leukemia, or fluorouracil, for colon and other cancers.

According to details of the investigation made public on Wednesday, some wholesalers opened up their own phony pharmacies simply to get their hands on drugs in short supply and re-sell them to patients at possibly higher prices. In some cases, the pharmacy and wholesaler were headed by the same person, or by a husband and wife pair.

State officials say pharmacies may be able to get access to scarce drugs when smaller wholesalers can't, on the assumption the drugs will go directly to patients who need them.

The findings illuminate gaps in the patchwork of state legislation that governs this sometimes shady network of pharmaceutical distribution known as the "gray market." And state officials are sometimes a step behind new scams -- hobbled by tight budgets, slow bureaucracies and inefficient communication with fellow regulators in other jurisdictions.

President Barack Obama made drug shortages a national priority in October, and also directed regulators to report cases of price gouging in the "gray market" to the Federal Trade Commission.

Originally posted here:
Pharmacy Ties To Drug Shortages Probed By U.S. Lawmakers