Senate Committee Releases Report on Widespread Drug Shortages
AllSides Summary
The Democrat-led Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a report Wednesday assessing nation-wide shortages of critical medications, determining drug shortages to be a threat to national security.
Key Quotes: The report stated that “shortages continue to have devastating consequences for patients and health care providers, including medication errors and treatment delays, and in some cases, have led to doctors having to ration lifesaving treatments.” The report called on Congress and the pharmaceutical industry to “work together to respond to this decades-long problem.” It also called for increased transparency between the government and pharmaceutical companies, calling on Congress to “require manufacturers to report when they experience an increase in demand or export restriction.”
Details: The report stated that drug shortages increased 30% from 2021 to 2022, with 295 drugs in short supply at one point in 2022. The report assessed potential causes of the shortages, determining that an overreliance on foreign imports of pharmaceutical ingredients from countries such as India and China paired with ongoing supply chain disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the shortages. The report called for additional research and analysis to better understand how to mitigate drug shortages, as well as increased public and private domestic investment in pharmaceutical production to decrease America’s reliance on medical imports.
How The Media Covered It: Left- and center-rated outlets covered the report mildly, while right-rated outlets ignored it. Right-rated outlets have previously covered drug shortages, with Fox News publishing an article on shortages earlier this month.
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Center
Rising drug shortages pose national security threat, Senate panel says

A new Senate report found that drug shortages in the U.S. are increasing in frequency and duration, due to over-reliance on foreign countries like China and India, which is posing national security concerns.
The report from the Democrat-led Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs provided a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s ability to predict drug shortages and address them effectively. It also laid out troubling statistics on the rate of drug shortages.
The report said drug shortages increased by almost 30 percent between 2021 and 2022, with...
From the Left
It's not just Adderall: The number of drugs in short supply rose by 30% last year

It's not just your imagination: Drugs such as children's flu medication, common antibiotics and ADHD treatments are getting harder to buy, according to a Senate report published Wednesday.
Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee say the number of new drug shortages rose by 30% between 2021 and 2022, an increase that has had "devastating consequences" for patients and doctors.
Towards the end of 2022, a peak of 295 individual drugs were considered in short supply — impacting treatment for everything from colds to cancer.
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From the Right
Adderall and Ozempic are in the spotlight amid widespread drug shortages in US

Across the nation, pharmacists are struggling to fill prescriptions for vital medicines on which patients have long relied.
From long-time essentials such as albuterol for asthma and Adderall for ADHD, to more recently popular drugs like Ozempic for diabetes, shelves are running dry and forcing professionals to scramble to meet their patients’ needs.
"I've been a pharmacist for 40 years and I've never seen it this bad for this long," John Seymour, a longtime pharmacist based in Virginia, told Fox News.
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