All out of Prilosec, again?

It happens every week, people coming up to the counter and asking, "Is your store all out of Prilosec? Do I have to have a prescription for it now? Where can I find some? Can you Order an of this in for me?"

Over the last couple of years along with all of the other drug shortages that have been occurring around the world Prilosec OTC is one of the main ones that is brought to my attention at the pharmacy counter weekly.
Procter and Gamble which dispense and manufacture the product have been saying time and time again that these shortages will stop, giving future dates that always get extended. Procter & Gamble and their business partners at AstraZeneca, say they have underestimated demand for the drug and are working to increase production and correct the shortage, but what does that mean for the general public who are trying to save money on expensive prescription medications like Nexium? Well there are many different over the counter products they could use in place of Prilosec, such as the generic Omeprazole which is placed on either side of the empty Prilosec shelves in many stores, and yet people won't trust switching. They say that this is the product they've always been using and the only thing that works for them, when the Omeprazole active ingredients are printed directly on the Prilosec box showing that they are indeed the same drug, and bio-equivalent, not to mention much cheaper.

"America's frequent heartburn problem has been much more frequent than we could have ever predicted," said Kurt Weingand, a spokesman for Procter & Gamble. 
With the majority of Americans in America having problems with acid reflux it's no wonder that the shelves are laying empty at major chain pharmacies and drug stores. 

So what's the hold up on mass producing more prilosec? 
In different featured news articles there is much talk about how Astrazeneca could be pumping out pills right and left, and yet they aren't, and customers of the public are left to wonder, why? It could indeed be due to the fact that the shortage of Prilosec had been good for AstraZeneca because it had increased sales of Nexium, a more expensive prescription heartburn medicine that AstraZeneca markets as well. 
With patients worrying about their usual medications not being on the shelves, they're wasting money to make doctor's appointments, and their doctors are prescribing different medications to tide them over, such as Nexium, which without insurance can be as costly as $5 dollars per pill, and for most Americans who are taking it once daily, that's $150 dollars a month, compared to the $24.99 price of prilosec, and $19.99 box of Omeprazole 28 count box. 

So what are these people to do? As a pharmacy intern and student at our pharmacy I've been watching our pharmacists substitute different products when we're short on prilosec and advising them if they don't want to substitute to ask their doctor or primary care physician what they think that they should be taking to help fight the burn. Although this was an even larger problem back in 2003-2006 it is still occurring quite often today in many community pharmacies around the united states, and causes many people to waste time and money. 


*picture from schmidtlaw.com