Consumers are all too familiar with the impact of the supply chain on the prices of groceries at the market, but it’s also hitting the pharmaceutical industry hard. In 2021 the price of fludarabine, an older chemotherapy drug, was only $110 wholesale but this year, Areva Pharmaceuticals has increased the drug’s price to $2,736. Why is the price of the older chemotherapy drug so much? Supply chain problems have caused a shortage and now there are only two other drug suppliers in the United States offering the drug: Teva and Fresenius Kabi.
Supplies Run Short and Prices Increase for Common Prescription Medications.
At this point, the shortages due to the supply chain are not going to be fixed quickly and will continue to impact drugs such as amoxicillin and Adderall which have all experienced shortages. The FDA is already warning that the situation could prove even direr and far-reaching. They have listed dozens of drug ingredients that are currently in short supply. Many of the drugs are necessary for diluting other medications for IV injections. Also compounds frequently used in anesthesia, calcium deficiencies and water retention are in very short supply.
Bindiya Vakil, CEO of Resilinc, a California-based firm, states the following in an interview: “What we don’t appreciate as much is that our drug supply is highly vulnerable because a lot of the source materials that go into developing the active pharmaceutical ingredients come from China. India is a huge market for generic manufacturing that we rely on in the U.S. And India is heavily dependent on China for those source materials that they transform into the APIs. We don’t have independence in our drug supply at all.”
At present, many foresee the Adderall shortage lasting for longer than 52 weeks.
“The drug industry is not really taking a proactive approach to understanding their supply chain dependencies. And they continue to be surprised time and time again,” Vakil said. “It isn’t easy to build resiliency but the time to do it was yesterday. The problem is not going away. And here in the U.S., as the population ages, the demand for medications is only going to go up.”
