Speaker 1: If you or maybe your kid has needed a prescription
Speaker 1: for the popular antibiotic amoxicillin lately. You know that's the
Speaker 1: bright pink one, Well, you might have had a hard
Speaker 1: time finding a pharmacy that has it on hand, or
Speaker 1: any number of other generic medications for that matter. Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: Ike Sweatlts reports that some of the most in demand
Speaker 1: generics in the US are increasingly in short supply.
Speaker 2: What's significant now is that there's a lot of shortages
Speaker 2: in a lot of different areas that are all affecting patients.
Speaker 2: So you have the cancer drugs, you have the antibiotics,
Speaker 2: you have the ADHD medicines. Each of these areas has
Speaker 2: seen issues and challenges before. What's unique now is sort
Speaker 2: of all happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: Ike's here to explain why that is, and Health Security
Speaker 1: reporter Riley Griffin is back to tell us what the
Speaker 1: US government is doing to try to fix this growing problem.
Speaker 3: But it remains to be seen whether or not they
Speaker 3: will achieve something at the scale of say the Chips Act,
Speaker 3: which was about bringing chips production back here to the
Speaker 3: United States. But we have not seen a Chips for pharma.
Speaker 3: Despite people advocating for it, and despite folks at the
Speaker 3: White House really thinking critically about all the different ways
Speaker 3: to approach this problem.
Speaker 1: I'm Wescasova today on the big take the generic drug dilemma.
Speaker 1: Let me just start by asking you the big question,
Speaker 1: what is causing this shortage of generic drugs in the US.
Speaker 2: There have been shortages of generic drugs in the US
Speaker 2: really for over a decade. There are individual events that
Speaker 2: might prompt each shortage, whether it's a hurricane or a
Speaker 2: plant that has to shut down or stop manufacturing because
Speaker 2: there was some safety or quality issue.
Speaker 4: With the drugs.
Speaker 2: But behind all of those is the fact that a
Speaker 2: lot of generic drugs don't make a lot of money,
Speaker 2: if any money at all, for the manufacturers. And if
Speaker 2: you have a product that doesn't make a lot of money,
Speaker 2: there's not a huge financial incentive to maintain a robust,
Speaker 2: reliable supply chain with a lot of extra empty manufacturing
Speaker 2: capacity that you can quickly use when something goes wrong.
Speaker 1: Generic drugs have been around for a long time and
Speaker 1: manufacturers have been able to turn a profit making them.
Speaker 1: Why have they become unprofitable now to the point where
Speaker 1: there are shortages.
Speaker 2: When the idea of generic drugs was introduced. You know,
Speaker 2: it was supposed to be that the company that invented
Speaker 2: a medicine was going to get some sort of patent
Speaker 2: protection on it for a little while.
Speaker 4: They make a lot of money during that time.
Speaker 2: To recoup their research and development costs, and then the
Speaker 2: drug goes generic. A lot of other companies can enter
Speaker 2: the market and produce their own versions at a much
Speaker 2: lower cost of patients. The whole idea behind generic drugs
Speaker 2: is that they're supposed to be cheaper for patients.
Speaker 4: The problem comes when.
Speaker 2: The cost of the generic drugs falls so low that
Speaker 2: their manufacturers can't cover their cost of production. And there
Speaker 2: are a lot of reasons why prices and cost of
Speaker 2: generic drugs have been going down and down. Partially, it's
Speaker 2: sort of baked into the system. So all generic amoxicillin,
Speaker 2: for example, this antibiotic the most popular antibiotic in the
Speaker 2: United States. They're all supposed to be equivalent to each other.
Speaker 2: That's what the FDA says. You go into a pharmacy,
Speaker 2: you fill a prescription for amoxicillin. You don't ask for
Speaker 2: a ma oxiscillin from this manufacturer that manufacturer. You just
Speaker 2: fill the prescription. They give you whatever generic they happen
Speaker 2: to have. So the only thing that generic drugs are
Speaker 2: really competing on is on the price. There's also consolidation
Speaker 2: among the companies that per chis generic drugs, especially for pharmacies.
Speaker 4: So there's basically.
Speaker 2: Three or four large buying groups that buy about ninety
Speaker 2: percent of all of the generic drugs that are dispensed
Speaker 2: in retail pharmacies you know, CVS Walgreens in the United States,
Speaker 2: And because there's only a handful of them, they have
Speaker 2: a lot of power in the market, and that power
Speaker 2: helps drive down the cost and price of those drugs.
Speaker 1: Like like you mentioned, amoxicillin is one of the drugs
Speaker 1: that's in short supply. I think anyone who's had a
Speaker 1: kid or was a kid knows all about a maxicillin.
Speaker 1: It's so widely used. But what other medicines are also
Speaker 1: in short supply.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of cancer drugs, chemotherapy, medicines that are
Speaker 2: in short supply right now. That's one big category. Then
Speaker 2: there's the drugs that you pick up at the pharmacy, antibiotics,
Speaker 2: a lot of medicines for ADHD, other antibiotics other than
Speaker 2: a maxicillin. You know, the latest data that we have
Speaker 2: from the University of Utah's service, there tracking three hundred
Speaker 2: and five drugs that are in short supply. That's the
Speaker 2: highest it's been since twenty fourteen. But what's significant now
Speaker 2: is that there's a lot of shortages in a lot
Speaker 2: of different areas that are all affecting patients. So you
Speaker 2: have the cancer drugs, you have the antibiotics, you have
Speaker 2: the ADHD medicines. Each of these areas has seen issues
Speaker 2: and challenges before. What's unique now is sort of all
Speaker 2: happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: And you report that part of the challenge for US
Speaker 1: manufacturers is increased competition from overseas, where they're able to
Speaker 1: get the ingredients and manufacture the drugs much more cheaply.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are different labor costs, there's different energy costs.
Speaker 2: That's sort of been happening, i would say over the
Speaker 2: past few decades. That's not something that's just new right now,
Speaker 2: but that is definitely something that has on one hand,
Speaker 2: made a lot of these medicines more accessible physically and
Speaker 2: financially for people all around the world. It's also made
Speaker 2: it more difficult for some manuft as to keep up
Speaker 2: financially and keep producing the drugs, and.
Speaker 1: So why is it important that these drugs have to
Speaker 1: come from US makers. Why can't we just shift to
Speaker 1: buying more foreign antibiotics and other drugs.
Speaker 2: Well, that depends on who you ask, So some people
Speaker 2: would say that that's totally fine.
Speaker 4: You know, that's just part of the globalized supply chain.
Speaker 2: Things are made in different places, and what we really
Speaker 2: need to do is work to reduce the barriers from
Speaker 2: getting the medicines from point A to point B. Another
Speaker 2: argument is that it's important for countries to be able
Speaker 2: to provide medicines for the health and well being of
Speaker 2: the people who live there and in times of international
Speaker 2: conflict or international crisis global pandemic, for example, we saw
Speaker 2: earlier in COVID some countries restricting the export of medical products,
Speaker 2: and so having medicines and having the ingredients to make
Speaker 2: those medicines available in the country might be helpful in
Speaker 2: that situation, or having policies that would allow those products
Speaker 2: to be bought and sold even in those more extreme situations.
Speaker 2: More domestic manufacturing of generic drugs is not something that
Speaker 2: everyone is calling for as a solution to these drug shortages.
Speaker 2: In fact, people are pointing out that domestic US manufacturing
Speaker 2: plants can have the same problems that plants outside the
Speaker 2: United States can have.
Speaker 1: And so what are the practical effects of having these shortages.
Speaker 1: Do you have to just switch to a different kind
Speaker 1: of say, antibiotic, or are you just able to find it
Speaker 1: overseas even if you aren't able to find it in
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 4: So it depends on what sort of medicine it is.
Speaker 2: So for antibiotics, there are other antibiotics other than amoxicillin,
Speaker 2: for example. The problem is last year, when a lot
Speaker 2: of these maxicillin shortages started, the companies that make those
Speaker 2: other antibiotics were not anticipating in a maxicillin shortage that
Speaker 2: would then lead to a run on their products. So
Speaker 2: when patients couldn't find a ma oxicillin, their doctor might
Speaker 2: give them a prescription for another type of antibiotics, say
Speaker 2: a different kind of penicillin. But then people started filling
Speaker 2: those prescriptions for all those penicillins. After that, then there
Speaker 2: was a diminished supply of those penicillins, and one of
Speaker 2: those is basically the only treatment for pregnant people with syphilis.
Speaker 2: And now that penicillin is a lot harder to find
Speaker 2: and making it more difficult to treat those folks. So
Speaker 2: there's sort of those like knock on effects of yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe in an individual case you can fill the prescription
Speaker 2: with something else, but that leads to a shortage down
Speaker 2: the road. There's another problem, especially with antibiotics, which is
Speaker 2: that you're really.
Speaker 4: Supposed to use the most specific.
Speaker 2: Antibiotic that you can because you want the antibiotic to
Speaker 2: kill the bacteria that you've got.
Speaker 4: You don't really want it to do anything else.
Speaker 2: If you use sort of a general antibiotic that's maybe
Speaker 2: not quite as good at killing that particular bacteria, what
Speaker 2: happens is the bacteria will develop resistance to that antabatic,
Speaker 2: and then that antibatic becomes much less effective in the future.
Speaker 1: In your reporting, you write about an American company called
Speaker 1: US Antibiotics, and they're facing a lot of the things
Speaker 1: you're describing here. Can you tell us about that company?
Speaker 2: So that company started a few years ago when they
Speaker 2: purchased what at the time was the only plant in
Speaker 2: the United States making a maxicillin. That plant used to
Speaker 2: make enough a maxicillin for everyone in the United States
Speaker 2: who needed it. It was opened in the seventies in Bristol, Tennessee.
Speaker 2: You know what, its peak had five hundred or so employees.
Speaker 2: Back then, this was a brand product, more financially lucrative.
Speaker 2: The drugs went generic. The plant changed hands a few
Speaker 2: times over the past fifteen years, and the company that
Speaker 2: owned it most recently before US Antabatics a few years
Speaker 2: ago went into bankruptcy and US Antibiotics bought the plant
Speaker 2: out that they knew that this was going to be
Speaker 2: a challenge. The company that bought it is a subsidiary
Speaker 2: of Jackson Healthcare, which is mostly a medical staffing company.
Speaker 2: And Rick Jackson, who runs Jackson Healthcare, told me he
Speaker 2: bought this sort of more out of what he felt
Speaker 2: was like a civic duty to keep it open and
Speaker 2: keep it running. He bought this plant knowing that it
Speaker 2: might not be the best business opportunity, but he wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure that a marxicillin was going to continue
Speaker 2: to be produced in the United States.
Speaker 1: And how'd that work out for him?
Speaker 2: Well, so far, the plant, you know, it's still running.
Speaker 2: He said that it's losing a lot of money, and
Speaker 2: he is hoping that the US government will commit to
Speaker 2: purchasing drugs from there to sort of provide a dedicated
Speaker 2: revenue stream and allow him to keep it open.
Speaker 4: And the future of this plant really hinges on that.
Speaker 1: And you went to see this plant, where was it?
Speaker 4: Like? It's a giant facility.
Speaker 2: I think it's three hundred and ninety four thousand square
Speaker 2: I've been writing for months about how patients hadn't been
Speaker 2: able to fill prescriptions, and I go and see a
Speaker 2: huge amount of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in the warehouse there.
Speaker 2: It was a pretty empty place compared to what it
Speaker 2: could be. There was equipment there that was just sitting
Speaker 2: under plastic. It wasn't being used anymore. There were areas
Speaker 2: of the plant that had been closed off a while ago.
Speaker 2: This is a highly regulated field and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of things you have to do in exactly the right
Speaker 2: way all the time, and that costs money, and that
Speaker 2: takes time to train people to do.
Speaker 1: So if they're losing money, how can they continue to
Speaker 1: stay in business?
Speaker 2: Rick Jackson Jackson Healthcare said he's providing funds for this,
Speaker 2: but he's not going to subsidize it forever. So I
Speaker 2: think that the future of the plant is up to
Speaker 2: how much money they're able to make selling to the
Speaker 2: government or selling to drug distributors in the commercial market.
Speaker 1: After the break. Is the US the only country facing
Speaker 1: this drug shortage problem? We hear a lot of these
Speaker 1: days about the Biden administrations push to bring manufacturing back
Speaker 1: to the US computer chips, electric vehicles, and batteries. Are
Speaker 1: there any incentives like this where the US government is
Speaker 1: giving money to pharmaceutical companies drug manufacturers to make these
Speaker 1: kinds of drugs that are in short supply.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Biden administration has said that domestic production of pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 2: of medicines, and of the raw ingredients are critical. When
Speaker 2: they announced the Infrastructure Plan several years ago, talking about
Speaker 2: the need for more support for semiconductors for electric vehicle batteries,
Speaker 2: they included pharmaceuticals and medicines in that push. We haven't
Speaker 2: yet seen the large, multi billion dollar subsidy packages coming
Speaker 2: out of Congress to support that in a way that
Speaker 2: we have for batteries and forced conductors.
Speaker 4: I've talked to.
Speaker 2: Folks about this, and one reason people have given is
Speaker 2: that it is politically unpopular to support the drug industry.
Speaker 2: And there's been a lot of attention over the last
Speaker 2: several years on high drug prices, often those high drug
Speaker 2: prices are brand medicines protected by patents.
Speaker 4: New drugs or maybe old drugs, they're still protected by patents.
Speaker 2: So politicians have been doing a lot to try to
Speaker 2: reduce the cost of health care. Healthcare is incredibly expensive
Speaker 2: and it might not look very good for a politician
Speaker 2: to stand up and say, Americans, you should be paying
Speaker 2: more for your medicines. And that makes it difficult to
Speaker 2: get money to these manufacturers of generic drugs. So making
Speaker 2: a lot of generic drugs in the United States would
Speaker 2: cost more than making them outside of the United States,
Speaker 2: and that money's got to come from somewhere. It could
Speaker 2: come from patients paying higher insurance prema, that could come
Speaker 2: from hospitals paying more for the drugs. It could come
Speaker 2: from the government subsidizing it.
Speaker 1: If the US does decide to spend some of this
Speaker 1: money to give incentives to US manufacturers to make these
Speaker 1: drugs in short supply, would that actually help ease the shortage.
Speaker 2: So there are some folks who are trying to establish
Speaker 2: manufacturing plants here and they say, we just need some
Speaker 2: money from the government to sort of get this going,
Speaker 2: and then once we have it going, then we can
Speaker 2: sustain it. I think folks are worried about the government
Speaker 2: just sort of spending a lot of money on a maxicillin, Like,
Speaker 2: right now, here's this acute problem. The government's just going
Speaker 2: to put all this money into it, and that might
Speaker 2: not have the long term.
Speaker 4: Impact people are looking for.
Speaker 2: But I think that people are still actively debating a
Speaker 2: lot of these proposals, and that Congress hasn't passed any legislation.
Speaker 2: There haven't really been any big changes in the last
Speaker 2: year or so on.
Speaker 1: This is the US the only country that's suffering with
Speaker 1: these kinds of shortages. What about countries in Europe, Asia
Speaker 1: and elsewhere.
Speaker 4: There are shortages all over the place.
Speaker 2: Other countries in Europe have been spending money to try
Speaker 2: and boost domestic production. And I think also important to
Speaker 2: remember a lot of these medicines are just not available
Speaker 2: in many parts of the world, So I think that's
Speaker 2: an important point too, and something that low cost generic
Speaker 2: drugs have been really good for getting medicines to places
Speaker 2: that otherwise might not have them period.
Speaker 1: Iik, you're watching this pretty closely as you continue to
Speaker 1: report in the story. What are you looking for?
Speaker 2: I am curious what the US government is going to
Speaker 2: do and what's going to make this different than situations
Speaker 2: we saw ten fifteen years ago. There was a big
Speaker 2: shortage of cancer drugs. Back eleven twelve years ago or so,
Speaker 2: there were congressional hearings, there was an executive order, there
Speaker 2: was political attention.
Speaker 4: Now we're seeing it again.
Speaker 2: Right before the COVID pandemic, the FDA put out a
Speaker 2: report looking at some of the root causes of drug shortages,
Speaker 2: and a number of things identified in that report were
Speaker 2: economic issues. And the FDA, who regulates the safety and
Speaker 2: effectiveness of medicines, it's not going in and setting prices
Speaker 2: for drugs.
Speaker 4: I guess I'm curious what's going to be different this
Speaker 4: time around?
Speaker 1: Hike, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now let's hear what, if anything, can be done to
Speaker 1: ease these shortages. Riley Griffin is Bloomberg's health security reporter. Riley,
Speaker 1: it's good to see again.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Wes, So maybe you can paint us a picture of
Speaker 1: what the I guess you'd call it global economy for
Speaker 1: generic drugs.
Speaker 3: Looks like the Food and Drug Administration, our regulator here
Speaker 3: in the US, overseas, the safety of more than two
Speaker 3: point one trillion worth of food, tobacco, and medical products
Speaker 3: produced in the US and abroad, and these sectors account
Speaker 3: for one fifth of the nation's economic activity. Just picture
Speaker 3: that for a moment, a regulator that oversees one fifth
Speaker 3: of the nation's economic activity. So the problem is, of course,
Speaker 3: that not all these pharmaceutical products are made in the US,
Speaker 3: and it becomes increasingly difficult to do that oversight work
Speaker 3: of products coming in for abroad. So I'll share some
Speaker 3: data with you straight from the mouth of the FDA.
Speaker 3: Seventy one percent of US biologic sales that kind of
Speaker 3: more complex drug are actually imports. These aren't the typical
Speaker 3: pills in your medicine cabinet, but the complex medicines you
Speaker 3: often get in an injection developed from blood, proteins, viruses,
Speaker 3: or living organisms. Seventy eight percent of manufacturers that make
Speaker 3: active pharmaceutical ingredients are located outside of the United States.
Speaker 3: And these are the materials that allow a drug to
Speaker 3: have the desired effect in the body. It's the part
Speaker 3: of the recipe that really makes the drug work. And
Speaker 3: back in twenty nineteen, about one fifth of API manufacturers
Speaker 3: were in India and thirteen percent were in China, but
Speaker 3: that's likely to have increased since then. India's pharmaceutical industry,
Speaker 3: for example, is only growing. It's the world's largest producer
Speaker 3: of generic drugs, and that's a fifty billion dollar industry
Speaker 3: over there.
Speaker 1: So given all of that and the shift of drug
Speaker 1: manufacturing to Asia where they're able to make more of
Speaker 1: it for cheaper, why are we having shortages?
Speaker 3: There are a lot of different reasons for drug shortages.
Speaker 3: The primary one, FDA says six and ten drug shortages
Speaker 3: are caused by quality problems, So that might be a
Speaker 3: contamination and a batch or a lack of appropriate active
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical ingredient. There are a lot of different reasons that
Speaker 3: can spur a manufacturing or quality issue, but that is
Speaker 3: the biggest driver.
Speaker 1: And so when a drug has to be pulled out
Speaker 1: the market because of a quality problem, do they relatively
Speaker 1: quickly fix it and get it back on the shelves?
Speaker 3: No wes. A year and a half is the average
Speaker 3: duration of a drug shortage. According to a Homeland Security
Speaker 3: and Government Affairs Committee report, sixty percent of drug shortages
Speaker 3: are caused by underlying quality or manufacturing issues. If there
Speaker 3: is something so severe that a product has to be
Speaker 3: pulled from the market, it could be a while before
Speaker 3: a shortage is resolved. Another reason for shortages is outright discontinuation.
Speaker 3: So say you used to have five producers of a
Speaker 3: specific generic drug and two of them get out of
Speaker 3: that business because it's no longer profitable for them. That's
Speaker 3: fewer production to meet the demand that exists. And then
Speaker 3: another one might be delays that are faced. Maybe you're
Speaker 3: not necessarily keeping up with a surge in demand over
Speaker 3: say respiratory season, which we're now entering. If a lot
Speaker 3: more people are seeking a certain drug and there's only
Speaker 3: so many manufacturers, they might not be able to keep
Speaker 3: up with demand too. So lots of different reasons for
Speaker 3: drug shortages in the US. And I want to be
Speaker 3: clear even as we discuss some of the challenges that
Speaker 3: FDA has an oversight of the pharmaceutical supply chain that
Speaker 3: exists abroad. That's not to say there aren't those quality
Speaker 3: issues here in the United States as well. So it
Speaker 3: exists in both places. And one of the underlying problems
Speaker 3: is a lot of these companies don't have the money
Speaker 3: to invest in advanced manufacturing, in automating systems. They leave
Speaker 3: room for human error and to upgrade the facilities so
Speaker 3: that it runs like a tight ship. Like over at
Speaker 3: Pfizer where they make the vaccine, they don't have Pfizer's money,
Speaker 3: they can't make those same investments. Pfizer has invested so
Speaker 3: much money in production of the COVID vaccine with many
Speaker 3: facilities here in the United States. That is a product
Speaker 3: that has made tens of billions of dollars on an
Speaker 3: annual basis. The COVID vaccine and its COVID therapeutic doubled
Speaker 3: its revenue in a single year, so they can feed
Speaker 3: that money back into the process. With generic drugs that
Speaker 3: only cost cents on the dollar or a few dollars
Speaker 3: at that, you don't have the same capital to reinvest
Speaker 3: in the manufacturing process, and a lot of companies end
Speaker 3: up cutting corners.
Speaker 1: Are there safety risks to having so many of the
Speaker 1: drugs that we take manufactured overseas where say the FDA
Speaker 1: doesn't have as much oversight into them, or is that
Speaker 1: not really a problem?
Speaker 3: It is increasingly a problem, and it's one that we
Speaker 3: at Bloomberg have taken a lot of time to examine
Speaker 3: this year. There is evidence of generic drug makers abroad
Speaker 3: cutting corners to keep costs down and evade being caught
Speaker 3: for quality issues. So this year alone, our colleagues have
Speaker 3: written about contaminated eye drops, poisoned coft syuroup which is
Speaker 3: over the counter, and low quality abortion pills. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are a number of cases the FDA would say,
Speaker 3: trust your generic drugs. But Congress is certainly looking at
Speaker 3: this question and pushing for more inspections abroad and other
Speaker 3: forms of oversight and investment that will ensure quality moving forward.
Speaker 1: When we come back, will the Biden administration give a
Speaker 1: boost to generic drug makers? So if there is an
Speaker 1: advantage both from a production standandpoint and for quality control
Speaker 1: to have these medicines made in the US, but US
Speaker 1: manufacturers can't afford to make a lot of them, what's
Speaker 1: the solution here? How do we actually solve this problem?
Speaker 3: I wish I had the conclusive answer to that question.
Speaker 3: A lot of different stakeholders are now coming to the table,
Speaker 3: particularly because of these acute drug shortages that have affected
Speaker 3: life saving medicines like chemotherapies or basic antibiotics, to present
Speaker 3: a solution. Many Congress people are pulling together legislation right
Speaker 3: now to bolster US domestic drug production, and some of
Speaker 3: the ideas include US health programs awarding contracts to US
Speaker 3: based companies. That's one idea floating out there, calls to
Speaker 3: actually increase prices of generic drugs. It's funny to say
Speaker 3: that aloud, given so much of the discussion is about
Speaker 3: lowering the cost of brand name pharmaceuticals, but again, this
Speaker 3: is a totally different beast. Another is improving transparency in
Speaker 3: the supply chain, simply having better data as to where
Speaker 3: the supply is coming from up and downstream. We don't
Speaker 3: want to just know where the generic is produced, we
Speaker 3: want to know where the active pharmaceutical ingredients that underlie
Speaker 3: that generic are made, and even the raw materials beneath that.
Speaker 3: Having more visibility into the supply chain and a sense
Speaker 3: of how many manufacturers exist, where they are, what kind
Speaker 3: of quality issues they may have had in the past,
Speaker 3: goes a long way to ensuring the security of the
Speaker 3: supply chain. Another would be then taking those manufacturers and
Speaker 3: ensuring they are properly registered with the FDA, And then
Speaker 3: of course talk of grants, tax incentives, and loans.
Speaker 1: We've also seen from the Biden administration a lot of
Speaker 1: money to try to bring them manufacturing back to the US.
Speaker 1: Is there any thought of putting that kind of incentives
Speaker 1: into generic drugs as well.
Speaker 3: Earlier this year we reported on a secret White House
Speaker 3: effort to tackle this very qui question of how to
Speaker 3: resolve drug shortages and underline quality issues that are driving them.
Speaker 3: The team was formed by two White House bodies, the
Speaker 3: National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council, with support
Speaker 3: from other parts of the White House, and they were
Speaker 3: really looking at this as a economic question, how do
Speaker 3: we support industry. Some of the things that they were
Speaker 3: thinking about were these tax incentives grants. Another novel concept
Speaker 3: was doing third party quality assessment, saying, hey, are there
Speaker 3: outsiders that we can bring to the table that can
Speaker 3: examine the pharmaceutical supply chain and say we see a
Speaker 3: problem here. But it remains to be seen whether or
Speaker 3: not they will achieve something at the scale of say chips,
Speaker 3: the Chips Act, which was about bringing chips production back
Speaker 3: here to the United States, among many other things. But
Speaker 3: we have not seen a Chips for pharma, despite people
Speaker 3: advocating for it, and despite folks at the White House
Speaker 3: really thinking critically about all the different ways to approach
Speaker 3: this problem.
Speaker 1: So we have a secret task urse inside the White House.
Speaker 1: Why does it have to be secret?
Speaker 3: That's a good question, Wes.
Speaker 4: No answer there, No answer.
Speaker 1: There, sirre Lely, I got to ask you. You must be
Speaker 1: a whole lot of fun to watch TV with when
Speaker 1: a pharmaceutical ad comes on.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean many of those drugs I knew like the
Speaker 3: back of my hand for a while, because that's what
Speaker 3: my beat was at Bloomberg was reporting on the blockbusters,
Speaker 3: the new to market drugs that were trying to reap
Speaker 3: as much as they could in sales in that specific
Speaker 3: window before patent expires. You will never see it and
Speaker 3: add on television for a generic drug. It's just not
Speaker 3: how it works. So if you're seeing something on TV
Speaker 3: that is a brand name product that has got a
Speaker 3: totally different business model than the generics that might be
Speaker 3: in your medicine cabinet.
Speaker 1: Riley always great talking with you. Thanks for taking the time,
Speaker 1: Thanks Wes, Thanks for listening to us here at the
Speaker 1: Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Speaker 1: Vicky Bergolino. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Sam Gebauer and Christine Driscoll. Hilde Garcia
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: I'm West Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big
Speaker 1: Take