Oh Oh Oh Ozempic! (*To the tune of Magic by Pilot)
Whoever wrote the Ozempic song, which only has four words, is probably going to make a shit ton more money than the guys who wrote Magic. In any case, I’d really like to do a Hitting Left show on the new generation of super drugs being oversold with jingles and images of reimagined pain-free, athletic, and romance-filled lives for us seniors. Maybe I will. But for now, the story is all about how capitalism creates shortages of basic needs, like housing, food, and medicine.
Remember how a shortage of diapers and baby formula during the height of the pandemic caused a crisis for low-income families? One in every three parents in the US faced a real challenge getting their hands on an adequate supply of diapers, according to the Institute for Research on Poverty.
Oh oh oh it's magic you know
Never believe it's not so
Then there was a manufactured life-or-death crisis of vaccine shortages caused by market manipulation and what became known as vaccine apartheid (inequality), where distribution was limited to the wealthier countries and communities by market factors or government policy. With the wealthiest nations controlling the vaccine’s production and distribution rights, third-world countries as well as poor and Black communities in the US encountered debilitating economic, social, and health-associated problems.
Today, it’s about drugs.
According to today’s Wall Street Journal,
Drug shortages in the United States have reached an all-time high. Supplies are low for everything from lifesaving injections to diabetes medications, according to data from the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks shortages. Among the medicines affected are the popular diabetes drug Ozempic, lifesaving allergy treatment epinephrine, child-friendly forms of the common antibiotic amoxicillin, chemotherapy medications, and injections hospitals commonly use in intensive care.
Many of the drugs are generics. The shortages mean patients must now visit multiple pharmacies to find a drug or wait longer to receive a key treatment, get second-choice substitutes, or pay more if a generic drug is unavailable but the brand-name version is. Shortages can also put patients at higher risk of medication errors as hospitals scramble to adjust doses.
Ozempic, a diabetes drug, is not-so-subtly being marketed as a quick fix for obesity, increasing sales to fad dieters and creating shortages for diabetes patients, who must pay more or seek out substitutes. It makes me wonder how a nation can afford lifelong treatments for so many people, with sticker prices for each patient ranging from about $900 to $1,300 every four weeks and rising.
Many generic drug makers have left the business or offshored to countries where labor is cheaper, such as India. There are few suppliers left to pick up the slack and compete with Big Pharma. It isn’t easy to jump-start manufacturing of a particular drug, especially the sterile injectables that are so tricky to make and that hospitals use so often.
The war economy
According to the World Bank, the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased by roughly 100 million to nearly 700 million; a significant share live in conflict regions. For the global economy, fuel and food shortages caused by war are exacerbating post-pandemic inflation that had already reached multi-decade highs in most of the world. This comes on top of a generalized rise in economic distress around the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the US, production demands have shifted away from badly needed goods and services to supplying the weaponry for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Supply chain disruptions have also been a major factor contributing to inflation, although some of the strain on supply can be traced to a manufactured surge in demand. Viewers are bombarded day and night with TV ads for new-generation drugs aimed primarily at an aging and obese population.
The US and Europe had inflation rates of over 5% even before the war. The war(s) make the situation even worse.
Before the seemingly unending and unwinnable war in Ukraine, both Russia and Ukraine accounted for a quarter of global wheat exports, with Russia being a major supplier of fossil fuels, especially to Europe. These, the assault on Gaza, and the growing contention with China are causing massive disruption in the supply chain and sea lanes, which in turn drive up prices and increase added pressures on the lives of poor and working people in the West.
Current drug shortages in this country are just one more symptom of war capitalism in crisis. Believe it’s so.
England has been experiencing shortages of anti-seizure medications for quite some time now. I’m not sure what is causing this, but it’s creating panic and frustration there.
This story just broke at Politico...
Health economists say the situation is characteristic of how drug prices are determined in the U.S. — where manufacturers hold a disproportionate amount of pricing power and pharmacy benefit managers are charged with enforcing that power in negotiations with employers. -- https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/18/employers-drugmakers-weight-loss-drug-costs-00152927