Lloyd Wayne Nye - Comment

I am a pharmacist and Pharmacy Information Systems coordinator. My organization is highly automated with Pharmacy dispensing and barcode-verification systems. My team of pharmacists and technicians spend, conservatively, 20-hours per week manipulating and changing product information and identifiers because of drug shortages. This is a patient safety issue because of the potential for foundational errors with repeated changes, additions, and deletions of product information. As a pharmacist of more than 30-year's experience, I find it frankly incredible that our ability to manufacture and supply pharmaceuticals has sunk to the level of third-world countries. I am highly skeptical that the pharmaceutical industry contends that in 50% of the shortages encountered, that the cause of the shortage is "unknown." This admission is frankly disingenuous or symptomatic of a poorly run, unaccountable business. As a health care provider for our society's Infirmed, I am in direct, eye-to-eye contact with those whom these shortages have betrayed. I would suggest, in the name of Common Good, that a responsible system for the provision of medicines be made a top priority of our government, before the demographics of our aging population render our present system of pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution a national, negligent Laughingstock.