Drug Shortages

Alex Tabarrok has a nice piece explaining how government regulations are causing shortages of crucially needed drugs in the U.S.:

Currently there are about 246 drugs that are in short supply, a record high. These shortages are not just a result of accident, error or unusual circumstance, the number of drugs in short supply has risen steadily since 2006. The shortages arise from a combination of systematic factors, among them the policies of the FDA. The FDA has inadvertently caused drugs long-used in the United States to be withdrawn from the market and its “Good Manufacturing Practice” rules have gummed up the drug production process and raised costs.

If you make the safety rules strict enough
and make the price controls tight enough
then the makers will not make enough
stuff.