The U.S. is in the midst of a prescription drug shortage.

Critical medications that treat diseases as deadly as cancer are on short supply, largely the result of overseas factories getting shut down.

New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone today put pressure on Congress to step in as senior political correspondent David Kruse reports, it's posing threats to patients and to making treatment decisions difficult for doctors.

It's not just those epic and other popular weight loss drugs that are in short supply.

Critical prescriptions to treat everything from anxiety to cancer.

Even basic antibiotics are hard to come by across the country.

Amoxicillin, something that you could easily get and go into a pharmacy and get your child strep throat, ear infections.

There's nothing worse than having to tell a parent that.

Sorry, we can't we can't find the antibiotic for your child.

What's worse off, we don't have it and we can't get it.

Last month I called eight different pharmacies before finding one which had any Adderall.

Unfortunately, they only had the brand name, which my insurance won't cover, and they weren't confident they weren't getting the generic any time soon.

At Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, Congressman Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is one of the Democrats on the committee who've been holding local roundtables and panel discussions to sound the alarm to those who may not realize the gravity of the situation.

Brought on by, among other issues, says pull on poorly regulated overseas production.

We found that a lot of these places were terrible.

They were manufacturing stuff that was toxic, that was, you know, shouldn't have been used, should have been manufactured, shouldn't have been sent here.

As a consequence, a lot of times those places get closed down.

And the most immediate one was was a facility in India that was closed by the FDA within the last few months or so.

And that created this supply shortage.

Poland says COVID broke the supply chain overwhelming legitimate manufacturers and creating a backlog that shows little signs of easing.

The congressman praised committee members from both parties for working in a bipartisan way to take some measures, including moving bills that tighten controls on overseas manufacturers and fight to keep prices down.

But expanding the authority of the FDA and other government agencies is proving difficult, says Malone.

What's really happening here, in my opinion, is that there are Republicans on the.

Right right who are influencing the party in general and the leadership in the House.

That just have lost faith in any federal agency.

Right.

I mean, they think that the Department of Health and Human Services doesn't function.

They say the FDA doesn't function, CMBS doesn't function.

And so there's a reluctance to do something new.

We're exposed now to the manufacturers giving us allocations based on what we ordered in the past.

They will give us a percentage of what we ordered.

Now, if we're used to using, say, 50 vials a month, they may only give us five vials a month.

So who are we supposed to use those?

And are we supposed to treat every patient that comes to the emergency department or some patients?

It's a good question, one that providers and patients are facing more and more frequently with unfortunately no remedy in sight.

I'm David Cruz.

NJ Spotlight News.

Support for the medical report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey an Independent Licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.