Drug shortages are a persistent problem, with FDA tracking over 100 shortages each year. Shortages often affect medically necessary drugs, with recent prominent examples including cancer chemotherapy drugs, saline, and drugs to revive trauma patients. Such shortages place patients’ health and even their lives at risk through treatment delays, rationing, increased chance of medication errors, and substitution with inferior alternatives. They can also affect medical research because clinical trials require standard baseline treatment in addition to the innovative therapies.

Most shortages result from a combination of structural economic factors and misaligned incentives, with key players in the market—hospitals, manufacturers, pharmacies, and wholesalers—facing limited consequences from the shortages that harm patients. Geopolitical concerns, although not a current cause of shortages, are a potential concern driving policymakers towards greater onshoring of drug supply chains.

The misaligned incentives and geopolitical concerns beckon government intervention. But the scope of the problem is substantive, and the problems have no one-size-fits-all, inexpensive solutions. To be effective and fiscally responsible, the government’s response will require a strategic approach.

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Tariffs

Explainers

Generic injectables

Geopolitical risks

GLP-1 shortage

Government testimony and comments

Events

Multimedia

Podcasts

Why do hospitals keep running out of generic drugs?

Marta Wosińska appears on NPR’s Planet Money to discuss the shortages of generic drugs in the U.S. healthcare system. 

Drug shortages and national security

On NPR’s All Things Considered, Marta Wosińska details the rise of prescription drug shortages and potential policy options. 

Race to the Bottom: Hard Bargain

Marta Wosińska discussed supply chains and prescription drug prices on the Race to the Bottom podcast.