The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working to get more medications permitted to be sold over the counter, aiming to cut red tape, drop prices, and keep Americans unnecessarily out of the E.R.
Commissioner Marty Makary, speaking with The Daily Wire via Zoom on Wednesday, said the initiative is a “common sense reform that is long overdue,” addressing an archaic system that is simply not working.
Most medications meet basic safety criteria, Makary said, “so then why do we have this archaic system whereby a physician has to prescribe it to you?”
Doctors can still prescribe over-the-counter medications, he noted, but history shows the prescription-only system has failed in key areas, including the opioid epidemic.
“It failed us with the over-prescribing of antibiotics, too — most antibiotics are unnecessary,” he said. “So, the system is not working as designed.”
“And now that we have a very educated public, a public that’s getting empowered with health information like we’ve never seen before; this is an opportunity for us to do some common sense reforms.”
Makary said getting more medications approved for over-the-counter status will lower prices for Americans.
“There’s something magical when a drug is on the shelf of a store and you see the price,” he explained. “You have price transparency. Prices are kept in check. And for the subset of Americans that shop by price, they keep prices in check for everybody else.”
This also cuts out the middleman, or pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).
“The pharmacy benefit managers are notorious for playing a money shell game behind the pharmacy counter, and you only get rung up for what’s called the copay,” Makary explained. “But your employer or your health plan may be charged an exorbitant amount of money for a basic medication.”
“Many of the modern-day medications that can be over the counter are actually less than the copay charged when you get them behind the counter,” he added.
Balancing safety, Makary said the drugs that will be approved for over-the-counter status will need to meet certain criteria.
“The FDA is going to create criteria and already has some basic criteria, but we’re gonna formalize that so that companies can understand what we are thinking when we talk about drugs that should be non-prescription, and they are common-sense things,” he said. “Drugs that are safe, no abuse potential, cannot be used in some nefarious way, and don’t require ongoing laboratory testing.”
The commissioner said some of the obvious drugs that could fit these criteria are naloxone, commonly referred to as Narcan, and anti-nausea drugs.
“If you think about it, it can also save lives,” he explained. “Why is Naloxone, which is used for an opioid overdose, a prescription-only medication in some of its forms? We can unleash the free market, get more price transparency, and reduce a lot of the hassles of healthcare for many Americans.”
“The frustrations of sitting in an emergency room just to get some anti-nausea medication — getting put in a funny looking gown and having to wait on a stretcher for hours and hours on end,” Makary said. “I mean, these are expensive healthcare utilization touchpoints.”
“What are we worried about somebody taking an anti-nausea medication that they actually didn’t really need?” he added. “We’ve gotta use common sense.”
The initiative could impact emergency room wait times, which — as previously reported by The Daily Wire — have been exploding since the implementation of Obamacare.
“It just doesn’t make sense that you go to the emergency room just to get a refill on a prescription, or you sit in an urgent care facility for hours sometimes because you need a medication that you know you need that’s worked before,” Makary said. “That should be over the counter.”
Related: Why ER Wait Times Are So Out Of Control — And How To Fix Them
