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US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack
- throwaway118899 3y agoHey Russia/China/India, can you keep up your attacks? You might be the only thing that can get this abomination of a system we call healthcare replaced.
- Blahah 3y agoThe absurdity is painful. That in a wealthy nation people can be unable to access medicine because the system for deciding who will pay how much for it is unavailable. Absolutely grotesque. The hack isn't the problem. The system that privileges access to medicine is.
- easyas124 3y agoI mean, even on a good day, the people who need drugs can't necessarily access them. Can't wait for the system to come back up so I can find out another important medication isn't covered.
- roenxi 3y agoThat sounds like it is still part of the system that privileges access. In a sane world, you have the option of paying the seller for the thing you want, then they give it to you. That is a big part of what makes this crazy. People are in an insane system where they can't pay for drugs. Then the system goes down and they really get into trouble.
- easyas124 3y ago[flagged]
- Blahah 3y agoRight, equitable access to medicine means everyone pays a zero, or trivially affordable price, that's the same regardless of who they are and regardless of what the medicine is. In the UK that is £9 maximum - free for many. P.S. vouched your gp comment back to life.
- caturopath 3y agoI'm not sure this is the message of this story. There are tons of computer systems involved under single-payer systems.
- fragmede 3y agoI agree that the hack is the problem, but a single-payer system would mean the moving parts of the distributed system are less complex which means it's easier to manage. Just having fewer corporations involved means fewer boundaries between systems which means it's less likely to break.
- Blahah 3y agoBut none relating to payment or ability to pay. In the UK, medications are dispensed without checking whether a person is eligible for free prescriptions. Anyone can collect a prescription medication without paying by claiming an exemption (e.g. being on low income, pregnant, etc.) without proof. The pharmacist can also waive the £9 fee for a prescription. There's never a situation where not being able to figure out the paperwork prevents medicine being available. The prescription system itself could be compromised, in which case everyone in society would face the same issue (which would be mediated by the fact that paper prescriptions are still produced, and a pharmacist can telephone a prescribing surgery). Only a supply chain attack would really cripple the system.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoPresumably even in a single-payer system, you still need just as good of an accounting of costs and care provided. The data needs are all still there, just fewer parties are transacting.
- Blahah 3y agoAbsolutely. But in the UK, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, etc... nobody would be refused their medicine because the payment system didn't work. Even if the computers didn't work. In the USA, people can and do die because there's a financial barrier to accessing medicine. Not so in countries that care about people.
- mindslight 3y agoPerhaps it's possible for the public to outbid the parasite's owners and pay the ransomware group to just shred the entire operation. As companies become ever more virtual, the corporate death penalty ala Fight Club or Mr. Robot seems ever more plausible.
- rainbowzootsuit 3y agoSomething between John Oliver burning $15M in medical debt and Tyler Durden with vans full of nitroglycerin.
- bluGill 3y agoThey will be pack if you pay. The only safe payment is in fbi tracked money. then track the guilty down and put them in prison (or what ever reform program). If the country they live in won't give them up that is an act of war and send NATO in.
- waihtis 3y agoIn practice, cyber attacks dont seem to trigger even discussion of article 5. It will be interesting to see if we reach a state where they do
- Geisterde 3y agoYou might think about geopolitics a bit too much if you reach for article 5 because of cyber crime, maybe a bit too much wargaming in your head, things are kind of tense these days and I dont think invading a country would be an appropriate or mature response.
- refurb 3y agoEvery nation does this? When I lived in a universal healthcare system I had to show my healthcare card to get medicine. Prescriptions were transmitted electronically. None of this is unique to the US.
- Blahah 3y agoHaving to show identity documentation doesn't rely on a payment processor. Prescriptions in the UK (and other places - Germany for example) are electronic by default but can be made out on paper and verified without a computer.
- raffraffraff 3y agoSame in Ireland. My doctor can send it electronically to a pharmacy but I can take my paperwork to any pharmacy to get it filled.
- refurb 3y agoIt's not showing an identity document, it's "our systems aren't up so I can't fill your prescription".
- raffraffraff 3y agoHow many countries allow a single company to monopolise it?
- refurb 3y agoAre you suggesting that single payer systems have multiple, redundant IT systems in place with different vendors?
- lionkor 3y agoIn germany I get a piece of paper and bring it to a pharmacy most of the time... It has worked when my phone was out of charge, when the pharmacy had Internet problems, etc.
- Kalium 3y agoOne the primary goals of any - and indeed every - medical system is to ration resources. Which is to say to privilege access to medicine. When we talk about medical care access, we tend to talk around this, but it's a needed part of any system. Any system that doesn't do this quickly learns, institutionally, that without some limiting mechanisms in place the system will be overwhelmed and its resources exhausted. Obviously some approaches and systems work better than others and are more tolerant to some kinds of faults. Unfortunately, none of this gets away from the absurd, insulting, and grotesque reality that care has to rationed somehow.
- throwaway118899 3y ago> One the primary goals of any - and indeed every - medical system is to ration resources. We can fix this. Essentially, every smoker, every alcoholic, and every obese human immediately goes to the back of the line. No need for this convoluted bullshit of a system.
- roenxi 3y agoFirstly, that is still a convoluted bullshit system for rationing healthcare. Logically you'd have to assign some sort of worthiness score to every activity that matters then track everyone to figure out their score and stop them lying to get to the front of the queue. Even if you literally only mean these 3 things, you'd have to track smoking and alcohol consumption. I doubt that'd be enough to effectively ration healthcare though, since the resource demand is practically infinite. Secondly, you're inviting some really complex moral and political arguments. There have been worse ideas than linking healthcare to a political assessment of lifestyle, but I suspect it'd be up there in the same orbit as communism, genocide and slavery. It is hard to see it ending well once the politicians start to disagree on the healthiness of people's lifestyles. I dunno, in some ghoulish sense it might be the next logical thing for the US to try. Why stop at merely bad ideas?
- nradov 3y agoThe Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) does allow health plans to charge higher premiums to smokers. Implementation varies by state. I'm sure that a lot of plan members just lie to avoid the surcharge. https://www.kff.org/faqs/faqs-health-insurance-marketplace-and-the-aca/can-i-be-charged-higher-premiums-in-the-marketplace-if-i-smoke/ https://www.kff.org/faqs/faqs-health-insurance-marketplace-a...
- gustavus 3y agoThe problem is not that the ransomware attackers attacked. It's the fact that $10 says they've been systematically underinvesting in security and nows it's biting them in the a*. But it doesn't matter because they've basically managed to be come a monopoly through acquisitions and using the bludgeon of government regulation to ensure no competition occurs. The next step is to move to declare this critical national infrastructure and create all sorts of new obtuse rules and regulations that will be in the name of security, but will mostly be theater and whose only real effect will be to create tons of new "compliance" jobs by low skilled morons who couldn't cut it in a real security job and whose primary job will be preventing actual security and sapping energy from anyone who builds things, because "it's not on the checklist". Not to mention the dozens of new vendors who will pop up soliciting a product that will promise to ensure customers are in complaince with the new regulations. Meanwhile Joe blow will still be unable to get his prescription filled and have his personal health data stolen and sold all over the black market.
- easyas124 3y ago[flagged]
- ethbr1 3y ago> $10 says they've been systematically underinvesting in security and nows it's biting them in the a*. But it doesn't matter because they've basically managed to become a monopoly [...]. The next step is to move to declare this critical national infrastructure and create all sorts of new obtuseness rules and regulations [...] There really only need to be 3 for critical infrastructure. #1 - Patch your shit according to industry standards, and have documented audit records that you've done that in a timely manner. #2 - You're fair game for NSA and DoD offensive pen testing. Failed pen tests are responsibility disclosed, then reported to the market after delay. #3 - So goes CISO, so goes CEO. Along with a ban from leadership roles for a number of years (5?). The issue is that the CEOs of these companies hire fall-on-your-sword guy as CISO, ignore the issues / listen to their CISO glossing over deficiencies, then claim breaches came out of nowhere, fire the CISO, and repeat business as usual. It's not going to change until CEOs have a realistic expectation that deficiencies will be found and personal consequences when they are.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoIts not just presciptions. Its eligibility , claim submission, prescriptions, etc. This is really affecting doctors and patients. Patients are not getting the drugs they need or the authorization for a critical procedure. Doctors' cash flow is interrupted. A lot of admin workers are backed up, and that itself is leading to problems too. Why the backup? Its not just electronic data exchange being offline. Its that everything is now "going to paper" (submitted hard copy) which requires humans. Those humans used to take care of the actual work. Now they are stuck shlepping paper from A to B instead. I submitted two links explaining this in more detail yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39561697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39561697
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoBrief summary of the situation (as of 3/1) Impacted services: -Electronic Prescriptions -Several Patient Record Sharing (PRS) systens -Claim Submission -Prior Authorization Appeals -Almost everything involving Fax + UHC Restored services: -Electornic Prior Authorizations (ePA) submissions -Real-time benefit checks
- londons_explore 3y agoSometimes this kind of event is the trigger to design a more human-efficient process. For example, if it goes on longer, the FDA might allow the majority of drugs to be sold directly on online marketplaces like Amazon without a prescription. That would remove a huge amount of paperwork and doctors appointments for a massive number of people. Let's be honest, the majority of prescription drugs don't have an abuse risk.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoNah. We wont even allow people to import drugs from canada. Meanwhile, canadians are the nicest, most honest people you will meet. You have a positive outlook and that deserves kudos, but its not going to happen, at least in relation to the current fiasco. The pharmacy lobby is too strong.
- 3y ago
- throwaway892238 3y agoNo mention of how United and Optum are a racket that harms people and needs to be broken up https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/unitedhealth-antitrust-investigation-doj-unitedhealthcare-optum/708727/ https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/unitedhealth-antitrust-i... https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/united-we-scam/ https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/united-we-scam/
- yieldcrv 3y agoThis is frustrating given the humans affected I always find it interesting how some Russians seem to understand our system better than we do, and we collectively seem to know so little about theirs for the same level of fun and profit
- aaomidi 3y agoExpect more of this with the heavy downward pressure on offshoring jobs too. Until there are hefty fines on these companies (to the point of forcing public ownership of it if they continue to fuck up) then these issues will continue.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bluGill 3y agoThey only need to find one vulunerable part of the system to understand not the full system.
- kgeist 3y agoRussia's prescriptions, patient history etc. all still happen on paper. The Kremlin uses typewriters for sensitive data [0] etc. So there's often nothing to hack. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/12/201492641/russia-goes-retro-to-keep-kremlin-secrets https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/12/201492641...
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoCyberattacks like these deserve the same kind of government response a terrorist attack gets.
- jMyles 3y ago> the same kind of government response a terrorist attack gets. Has that particular kind of response ever achieved anything? (Anything germane to the concern at hand, I mean - of course it has often achieved enriching well-connected contractors and such)
- raverbashing 3y agoHas looking like a sitting duck ever achieved anything besides making you look like a good repeat target?
- Geisterde 3y agoYou think invading countries is a plausible way to stop people from cyberattacking the united states? How many people would you say youll have to kill?
- raverbashing 3y agoNobody is talking about invading countries, you don't need to do that to retaliate against a handful of people
- Geisterde 3y agoWhat does "send nato in" sound like to you? Do you think other countries are cool with you violating their borders?
- birdiesanders 3y agoThis fits the bill for terrorism in my mind, it is an intentional act to directly affect the people of a nation, and if it causes even one death it becomes way more likely the law will see it as such. Who knows when (one of these events will eventually cause a response from fed) cyberattack becomes synonymous with terror attack, though. Could be this one, could be the future (hypothetical) attack on Fox News or CNN, could be someone turning off the sewage treatment plant for DC, one of them will ruffle the right feather, eventually.
- tempodox 3y agoI wonder how many more of these incidents will need to happen until everyone starts to take computer security seriously. How much longer will there be zero consequences for offloading the risk of shoddy security to your users?
- 15457345234 3y ago> everyone starts to take computer security seriously Weren't the last big attacks literally carried out by hackers exploiting security software? As in, the solarwinds thing, which was carried out on systems which were 'textbook secure' ? If you want a secure system, my advice would be to fall back to using dumb hardware terminals, VT100 style. Anything more complicated than that will have a backdoor.
- tempodox 3y agoFair enough, a no-bullshit discussion on how to actually achieve security should be part of the process.
- 15457345234 3y agoThe issue is, actually having that discussion becomes very hard, because a lot of 'security consultants' basically rely on the commissions they get from selling that type of inherently-creating-a-single-point-of-compromise managementware. So all of the 'experts' you might draft in to give you helpful advice will be telling you exactly the opposite of what you should be doing, which is reducing your attack surface as much as possible; cutting down, not increasing, the number of apps installed. And don't get me started on MDMs, which are basically a rootkit that's only as benign as the guy sitting behind the operator panel.
- faeriechangling 3y agoI wouldn’t characterize solarwinds as “security software”, the product that got hit was classic up/down monitoring software.
- jart 3y ago
- FounderBurr 3y agolol couldn’t happen to nicer people. Take their money then tell them it’s ’not Covered’ and just keep plowing away.
- Projectiboga 3y agoThis is due to not having a single payer. In this situation we all loose. Lack of being single payer also poses risks to us all regardless of coverage with our emergency rooms all over crowded.
- redwall_hp 3y agoEven without single payer, insurers should never be able to stand in the way of a doctor practicing medicine. They should be strictly required to cover any procedure or medication a doctor deems necessary, and the practice of pre-approvals should be forbidden.
- refurb 3y agoThat’s ridiculous because in a single per system the government stands in front anyways. There are plenty of drugs in Europe doctor might want to prescribe but the government says “nope, not going to pay for it”
- ejstronge 3y ago> That’s ridiculous because in a single per system the government stands in front anyways. > There are plenty of drugs in Europe doctor might want to prescribe but the government says “nope, not going to pay for it” Not only does this happen with the current system, it’s worse, because there aren’t always explicit instructions about what will be covered - so your care depends on whether your doctor is willing to beg the insurer to provide a drug to you
- Wytwwww 3y agoInsurance companies can always hike premiums to compensate though. State run system could/would be a lot stricter with their funding and have less wiggle room.
- vinay427 3y agoOne major difference is that most people, at some financial burden, can choose to change insurance providers whereas in many countries with universal systems (single-payer or otherwise) the government guidelines for what the national service or insurance providers must pay for or not tends to be more consistent across the board. For instance, this is a struggle for people in many European countries who would benefit from access to specific psychiatric prescriptions which are either not prescribed except after trying various cheaper options or are not even approved because of the potential cost to the government, while the same drug is often available in the US (ranging from $10-hundreds a month, as is typical in the US). Public healthcare in at least California sounds more comparable to the universal single-payer systems I’ve seen in its relative inflexibility.
- anovikov 3y agoI think it just needs to reverse to old and tried all-paper, hard copy, no-electronics approach of yesteryear. There is no way institutions that are filled with non-technical people can prevent this if the entire system is electronic and networked.
- mikewarot 3y agoYet again we blame everyone and everything except the operating systems that have a massive design flaw baked in from the 1970s, they all rely on ambient authority to function. This isn't going to get better until this our fundamental OS security models get updated to reflect reality.
- ryanjshaw 3y agoI honestly don't get it. With the number of IT billionaires out there, why isn't there just one who wants to solve this problem? We already know how, in principle - capability-based, formally verified OS kernels like EROS and CapROS have shown us the way. The next step is building a real world OS and user environment that carry these principles through. Yes, if would take 10 years at a minimum. But it wouldn't even be a charity, even if you went the OSS route! There would be massive commercial opportunities arising out of the product. If you have the money, and it's profitable and world changing in 15-20 years, why not do it?
- hiddencost 3y agoThe billionaires aren't coming to save us.
- Veserv 3y agoBecause you can just lie and claim you make secure systems like Microsoft, Apple, and Google have been doing. Much easier and you get to have a billion features in your "secure" product so it supports more uses than actual secure systems. There was a small pile of systems sufficiently secure for actual high security work during the regime of the TCSEC Orange Book and the early era of the Common Criteria. But once Microsoft and the other consumer IT companies lobbied to get serious security certification requirements removed or reduced since their security was inadequate to bid on new projects and they found that unfair, they sucked all the air out of the room for actual high security commercial systems. And, even if they did decide to pursue it their every instinct is completely incorrect. They have all made their fortunes on entertainment and consumer software and principles like "move fast and break things" that are antithetical to the development of secure and reliable systems; they do not have the foggiest clue how to solve problems in security or even how to compose secure components into secure systems. That is not to say that nobody is doing so, you can just look to what is actually being deployed in domains that actually demand high security and high reliability systems and have the testing, auditing, and verification to establish conformance like aerospace and certification requirements like the Common Criteria Separation Kernel Protection Profile (SKPP) which required formal specifications, formal proofs of security, and a clean NSA penetration test (i.e. the literal NSA could not find any vulnerabilities). However, the market for things that actually work is not as large as you might think given how much people crow about security because again, you can just lie. The chickens have not come home to roost yet because cyberattacks are only just starting to be a serious problem. It takes a while for 18 year old kids to bootstrap worldwide criminal enterprises able to attack millions of companies. I mean, even Zuckerberg had VC funding and it still took them over a decade to saturate the world. You have to cut the cybercriminals some slack for taking a few years to become a actual crisis. Give it another 10 years.
- oogali 3y agoChange Healthcare is a transaction clearinghouse, or effectively an API, translation, and routing gateway. Think of it as a private SWIFT vendor. They were acquired by UHC, which is why you see the Optum name. But this is not specific to UHC/Optum patients. Providers (hospitals, doctors, software vendors) interface with CH’s REST+JSON APIs and in turn CH emits EDI records to the insurance company backends (and translate the responses from EDI to JSON/XML/etc). This affects general healthcare EDI messages (claims, benefits eligibility verification, ACH notices, etc). The people impacted do not have direct EDI implementations with the insurance companies. If they did, they could side step this. Or even a different clearinghouse. Edit: clarified some ambiguous terms
- raffraffraff 3y ago> The people impacted do not have direct EDI implementations with the insurance companies. If they did, they could side step this. Thank you. I was trying to figure out how this company seemingly handles most of this stuff in the US.
- bbor 3y ago> Optum first disclosed on February 21 that its services were down as a result of a “cyber security issue.” Its service has been hamstrung ever since. Shortly before this post went live on Ars, Optum said it had restored Change Healthcare services. “So far” seems like a stretch, unless they’re including ramp up time or something? It really sums up the whole article: great quality journalism, absolutely terrible exploitative publisher.
- justinclift 3y agoWhere's the "so far" in that statement?
- raffraffraff 3y ago> Optum provides a nationwide network called Change Healthcare, which allows health care providers to manage customer payments and insurance claims. Is the entire system in the US really using a single private company to handle this?
- nradov 3y agoNo. Optum (Change Healthcare) has multiple active competitors in the clearinghouse business. But due to limitations in the industry interoperability standards, switching vendors is a slow and expensive process.
- tvanhens 3y agoMy former employer Stedi, an EDI integrations startup, is working on a compatibility layer to help companies who are affected route messages to alternative clearing houses. The founder posted on Twitter to let people know they can also reach out directly for urgent support at change@stedi.com https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1764057780800094350?s=46 https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1764057780800094350?s=46
- koliber 3y agoI hope the compatibility layer will be self-hosted. Otherwise the compatibility layer could become an even bigger single point of failure.
- vel0city 3y agoThis current failure is already a failure of a hosted compatibility layer. The service in question presents a central JSON API to do healthcare billing so you don't have to deal with the ancient arcane EDI formats to talk to insurers.
- nradov 3y agoThe EDI formats are old, but reasonably well documented and quite easy to implement. The bigger obstacle to interoperability in this space is that the various payers have different rules around handling optional data elements or how certain things should be coded. You have to implement the base X12 EDI format plus a supplementary guide for every payer. And there are changes every year. So, it can be difficult for provider organizations to stay current. CMS could use their regulatory authority to tighten up the specifications and reduce the ability of payers to do their own thing.
- mise_en_place 3y agoMy doctor notified me of this ransomware attack a few days ago. I'd imagine it's quite frustrating to deal with. What I've noticed is that engineering/tech culture is non-existent in heavily regulated industries. IT is usually a cost center, so there is very little incentive to improve things. Until there is a paradigm shift in their existing culture, these type of issues will continue to happen.
- DinaCoder99 3y agoThe walking corpse that is the american healthcare system is really showing its bones right now
- op00to 3y agoI, unfortunately, take a bunch of prescriptions and had literally no problems over the last week. I even had a new prescription sent to pharmacy, filled, and processed by insurance. I’m sure this is bad for those affected, but the prescription market does not seem “hamstrung” to me.
- _heimdall 3y agoReducing centralization seems like the only rational way of avoiding such large attacks. No system can ever be 100% secure, centralizing to such extremes creates a huge target with a massive payoff for anyone interested in hacking it. We keep making this mistake as a society, assuming that centralization is the answer and that optimization when the system runs well is always worth the risk.
- Buttons840 3y agoI depend on the security of many systems. If I want to test the security of those systems myself, with the intent to report problems I find, I will be arrested and thrown in jail. Why are we sacrificing national security for the convenience of companies? We should have strong legal protections for security researchers. Anyone who attacks a system with the intent of causing minimal harm and reporting what they find should be protected. We could also create a government agency whose job it is to continually try to break into these systems we depend on, a national red team. The only downside is it will inconvenience and embarrass many companies. We might also find that the majority of our companies and institutions are incapable of creating secure systems, and that will be a hard political reality to deal with. But this is literally a matter of national security. The bad guys will not be stopped by laws, but maybe the good guys can still win if we don't hamper the good guys with bad laws.
- peteradio 3y agoUnitedhealth IT labor force is vastly offshore, the system is inherently insecure.
- packetlost 3y agoThe fact that healthcare providers are allowed to give access to sensitive healthcare data to foreign nationals should be illegal.
- peteradio 3y agoIn some cases it is illegal but it requires you to essentially trust that systems are locked down according to frankly a flimsy attestation. I have my doubts how trustworthy are some of these attestors. There is a deep culture of ass-covering over anything else.
- Buttons840 3y agoYes, there's a deep culture of questionnaires and dubious "scans" in the security industry. It's all we got because nobody is actually allowed to kick the tires. Nobody is allowed to actually test the security of the systems they rely on.
- johann8384 3y agoThis is what one front of the next world War looks like.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoPart of the problem is drugs in the US are so expensive and hard to obtain. Where I live I receive a cancer drug for free, but the one time it was not available, I just went and bought the month's supply from the pharmacy for $1300. In the states that same drug would cost me $14,000, and of course I couldn't just buy it OTC. BTW the drug is manufactured in the US.
- zkanter 3y agoHi all: I'm the founder/CEO of Stedi. Came here to say that we're preparing to publicly launch drop-in replacements for Change's Claims and Eligibility APIs[1]. Our new API will allow customers who have been using Change to directly switch with minimal development effort. The API: i) accepts Change JSON request format, ii) translates it to X12 270/837, iii) submits it to a clearinghouse (we have a master connection with Availity, or can use yours), and iv) returns the response as Change JSON. We are working around the clock over the weekend to onboard the first external customers. Here are the beginnings of the docs: https://www.stedi.com/docs/api-reference/post-healthcare-claims https://www.stedi.com/docs/api-reference/post-healthcare-cla... https://www.stedi.com/docs/api-reference/post-healthcare-eligibility https://www.stedi.com/docs/api-reference/post-healthcare-eli... Our goal is to help providers submit claims and eligibility checks as quickly as possible. We’ve created a streamlined contracting process along with a standardized price list and the ability to match volume pricing. We can get folks set up with a dedicated Slack channel immediately and start working with engineering/ops teams to get back online. If there's anything we can do to help, email us at change@stedi.com or contact me directly (zack@stedi.com). [1]: https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1764057780800094350?s=20 https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1764057780800094350?s=20
- RecycledEle 3y agoRecall the fable of the grasshopper and the ant: https://read.gov/aesop/052.html https://read.gov/aesop/052.html Everyone should have a reserve of everything they need to the extent it is practical. A reserve of meds should be a high priority. Reserves act as an accumulator or a capacitor. When we ants stock up in good times, it primes the supply chains to be ready to provide a little extra later. If half the customers buy 10% extra over time, the supply chains expect to provide an extra 5%. When shortages hit, we ants are taken care of, and do not stand in line competing with the grasshoppers for the last few bottles of pills. Because we ants primed the supply chains when stocked up in good times, there might even be an extra bottle of pills in addition to fewer customers fighting over it. We ants perform a public service by stocking up. The vast majority of meds in the US say they are "made in the USA," but the precursor chemicals are usually made in China. Trans-oceanic trade was cut off (for a while and severely reduced for longer times) in World War 1 and again in World War 2. It can happen again. It is a common scam to buy something from China, claim to make it in the USA, and resell it at a large markup. This means that a lot of things we think are made in the USA will not be available if international trade is restricted or stopped. I expect massive shortages of meds when/if the balloon goes up in the South China Sea. Natural selection often eliminates certain populations in short, sharp corrections. I hope I am wrong and the grasshoppers do just fine this winter.
- LargeWu 3y agoAre you suggesting people just buy extra prescription drugs? That's not how it works.