Do you honestly think that baking soda is in shortage because of patent restrictions? The US drug system is messed up, but not that messed up.
They are in shortage because it takes a long time (six-ish months) to certify a factory as producing something safe for consumption[1], and in the normal course of things, there is very little point in setting up a second line to produce medical grade sodium bicarb- no company is going to show a profit from it. So you get one place producing the national supply, just large enough to handle the normal demand. Then they have a problem (in this case, Pfizer was unable to source the glass ampules) and now there is no production.
[1]: And with good reason. Producing mass quantities of sterile, consistent, things with the correct amount of material is hard.
Source: wife is a pharmacist tasked with doing her hospitals contingency plans on bicarb.
> there is very little point in setting up a second line to produce medical grade sodium bicarb
Decentralization and redundancy of medical production lines would make our country safer and more robust to unforeseen events. It would certainly be a benefit. I agree, however, that it would be more expensive.
At least in government, that sort of thing is usually handled with second-source agreements as a contingency of a supply contract. Can have the side benefit of introducing some competition. See AMD, once-second-source-supplier for Intel, Fairchild, and National Semiconductor.
Sure, and for some stuff this is done now. But there are something like 9,000 different pharmacy items (leaving aside medical supplies like sterile bandages, which are procured through a totally different system) in my wife's very small hospital (that ships out all the difficult cases, requiring specialized medicines, to larger nearby hospitals). Should there be second-source agreements- and extra productions lines- ready to go for all of them?
Most of these medicines are like sodium bicarb- the national population doesn't need that much, but if you need it, it's hard to get a good substitute. Snake antivenom or daraprim are good examples of these niche products that are even more crucial than bicarb, but still probably not used enough for any one organization to be able to justify a second-source contract.
This article isn't just about baking soda. If society freely allows you the massive competitive barrier of a patent to ensure your riches, you should also have some obligations to society as part of the contract.
The article isn't, but most of the really egregious price increases we've observed (e.g. epipens, all the drugs that Martin Shkreli bought, etc.) have likewise not been on drugs under patent protection.
In point of fact, most drug companies have faced what are called patent cliffs, where due to troubles in the R&D pipeline[1] drugs lose patent protections far faster than new drugs come online to replace them. While this is probably bad for society overall- we really want lots of new drugs getting discovered and making us healthier![2]- it means that patents protect smaller and smaller portions of the overall drug market. IOW, playing games with them has less and less overall value as the years have progressed.
Need to find new levers to have influence on this market.
[1]: A totally different subject with a lot of theories as to why, but not much in the way of solid evidence.
[2]: Yes, the 1k USD/pill Solvadi is amazingly expensive. By the same token, it actually works, and cures you after three months. This is the sort of medicine that improves humanity, even at that price. There are plenty of other drugs (especially cancer drugs that extend lifespan by averages of <4 months) that do not improve humanity, but Solvadi does. It just costs a ton.
