FDA Pushes to Move More Drugs Over the Counter to Slash Costs and Cut Red Tape

In a rare moment of clarity from Washington, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to move more medications over the counter, allowing Americans to bypass the expensive, bureaucratic mess that is our modern healthcare system.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is leading the charge with what he calls a “common sense reform that is long overdue.” And he’s absolutely right. The current system, designed decades ago, is outdated, inefficient, and needlessly costly forcing patients to jump through hoops just to get access to basic medications.

“Most medications meet basic safety criteria,” Makary explained. “So then why do we have this archaic system whereby a physician has to prescribe it to you?”

Good question. Especially when that system helped fuel the opioid epidemic and continues to burden Americans with unnecessary costs and delays.

Here’s why this matters:

• Over-the-counter drugs are cheaper. When a drug is out in the open, prices drop thanks to free market pressure. Patients see the price directly not some hidden figure manipulated by insurance middlemen.

• It cuts out corrupt middlemen. Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) have become the swamp creatures of the pharmaceutical world. They run shell games behind the counter, where the actual cost of a drug is often less than your copay. Yes, really.

• It frees up emergency rooms. Americans are wasting hours in ERs and urgent care clinics just to get anti-nausea meds or a refill they already know works for them. It’s not just expensive it’s insane.

Makary is pushing for clear criteria that will determine which drugs can go over the counter: medications that are safe, have no abuse potential, don’t require ongoing testing, and can’t be used for nefarious purposes. That includes obvious candidates like anti-nausea meds and naloxone (Narcan) the opioid-reversal drug that could save lives but is still kept behind the counter in some forms.

“It just doesn’t make sense that you go to the emergency room just to get a refill on a prescription,” Makary said. “That should be over the counter.”

He’s not wrong and it’s about time someone said it.

This reform would also hit one of Obamacare’s nastier side effects: skyrocketing emergency room wait times, driven by an overloaded system that forces people into expensive care for basic problems. Since the so-called "Affordable" Care Act, ERs have become clogged with patients trying to navigate a system that was supposed to make healthcare easier and cheaper and did the opposite.

This new FDA initiative is a step in the right direction, a rare case of government getting out of the way and letting the free market work. More transparency, lower prices, fewer gatekeepers. That’s how you fix healthcare not with 2,000-page legislation no one reads.

Let’s hope this reform holds and expands. Americans deserve direct access to the medications they need without asking permission from bureaucrats or padding the profits of crony middlemen.

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