I'd comment, but why bother? You ban commenters who disagree with you.

I've been commenting for years and not seen that, so pony up with some actual thoughts.

As to the matter at hand, this article is definitely slanted. While they mention production issues they also fail to note that the FDA is stepping up enforcement, closing plants left and right, etc. Raw materials, most of which come from China, can get shorted due to quality issues. When that happens, the entire market has to step up. Making drugs isn't like normal widgets. There's very long lead times to get a new production line started, intensive testing and certification necessary to get the active ingredients approved, all sorts of FDA-mandated testing to even allow a company to make the drug, etc. If the shortage is going to be temporary why would another company invest all of the money to actually start up a production line?

Of course there are financial considerations outside of that. Those generally play in to whether or not a company even tries to get their generic version approved. Some folks will exit the market, too, if they don't have enough marketshare to make the drug profitably - but that tends to only happen when they've got 10% or less of the share on a low use item. In practical terms that just increases the price of the drugs due to lessened amounts of competition.

I do like how the article blames the morphine shortage (by the way, did you know that the DEA limits the total number of doses allowed to be produced for all C2 meds? So if, in a year, we have a high number of cases where we legitimately need these pain meds but the limits already been reached there's not a damn thing that can be done to get more of them? Article forgot to mention that tidbit.) for two deaths. Not the nurse, pharmacist, or technician who's responsible.

Maybe a journalist should bother to know their ass from a hole in the ground prior to typing. I realize that's expecting a lot from the media, but at least try...

Last point - generics have cut into the profit margins for brand companies only. For hospitals, pharmacies, and nursing homes they increase profits. For patients and the government they reduce costs - drastically.

It's actually very difficult to ban commenters outright with our ancient blog software. It's been so long I can't remember the last time I did it. I do sometimes delete genuinely annoying comments without notice, but lately that's involved some weenie who got a bug up his butt about one of our error messages.

I also regularly screw up regexes trying to stop comment spammers. People always take that very personally for some reason.

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you said bug. then you said butt.

Don't worry about it, "reader" doesn't have any argument better than "hurr durr doctors who do anything for money instead of out of the goodness of their hearts are evil and must be destroyed before they kill us all." He's just hoping none of us call him on it.

Funny thing is that the last site I got banned from is hyper-liberal. Never been banned from a conservative site.

Have gotten a 24 hour ban a few times on Fark, though. Apparently they've got some nancies over there...