Four U.S. senators have reintroduced a bipartisan bill focused on strengthening the pharmaceutical supply chain by incentivizing drug manufacturing in the U.S. and allied countries.
Dubbed the Rolling Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient and Drug (RAPID) Reserve Act, the bill would help address drug shortages, improve preparedness and reduce national security threats from U.S. overreliance on China and other countries for critical medications and their key ingredients, the bill’s sponsors said in a June 12 press release.
The bill was first rolled out in 2023 in the wake of a report published that year that found more than 295 medications, including lifesaving treatments, were in short supply nationwide. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Ted Budd, R-N.C., are the bill's sponsors.
The legislation would require the Department of Health and Human Services to issue contracts to U.S.-based drugmakers or those that operate in a member country of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in order to maintain reserves of critical medications and key active pharmaceutical ingredients as well as to strengthen supply chains.
The four senators also sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking that the agency review underutilized domestic manufacturing capacity and options for the government to invest in advanced manufacturing capabilities.
“Every American should be able to get the medicine they need when they need it. Increasing domestic and reliable manufacturing capacity for our critical, lifesaving medications is essential to addressing drug shortages that can compromise patient care,” Peters said in the release. “This bipartisan bill will help ensure Americans receive the essential medications they need while strengthening our ability to respond to future public health crises.”
Drug shortages have been an ongoing problem with the U.S. healthcare system for several years, leaving doctors, pharmacists and patients to deal with inadequate stocks of chemotherapies, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder meds, antibiotics like amoxicillin and other in-demand medicines.
In April last year, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) released data showing 323 drugs were in shortage in the U.S. as of 2024’s first quarter—the highest number recorded since the ASHP began tracking shortage data back in 2001.
The FDA currently lists 88 drugs as actively being in short supply.
“While we’ve taken a lot of steps to increase domestic manufacturing of critical medicines and key ingredients, we still have more to do,” Kaine said in the release. “This bipartisan legislation would reduce our reliance on foreign countries, encourage drug manufacturers to increase domestic production, and help prevent drug shortages.”