How To Reduce Medical Expenditure,

worldwide,

would you take a medication that had past the manufactures expiration date? many of us would not, but according to this article with many medications we are being way to cautious, from the article,

One pharmacist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston says the 240-bed facility is able to return some expired drugs for credit, but had to destroy about $200,000 worth last year. A commentary in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings cited similar losses at the nearby Tufts Medical Center. Play that out at hospitals across the country and the tab is significant: about $800 million per year. And that doesn’t include the costs of expired drugs at long-term care pharmacies, retail pharmacies and in consumer medicine cabinets.

it is worth noting that when a medication is in short supply drug companies, through the FDA, and without testing it appears, arbitrarily extend the shelf life of their products, in this case injectable atropine, dextrose, epinephrine and sodium bicarbonate from Pfizer had their expiry dates altered to last 6 months longer, again from the article, 

The news sent Berkowitz running to his expired drugs to see if any could be put back into his supply. His team rescued four boxes of the syringes from destruction, including 75 atropine, 15 dextrose, 164 epinephrine and 22 sodium bicarbonate. Total value: $7,500. In a blink, “expired” drugs that were in the trash heap were put back into the pharmacy supply.

so when will we see expiry dates changed and money saved?

ProPublica asked the FDA whether it could expand its extension program, or something like it, to hospital pharmacies, where drugs are stored in stable conditions similar to the national stockpile.

“The Agency does not have a position on the concept you have proposed,” an official wrote back in an email.

so there you have it, in this case the FDA, but I guess the same situation is in every country where the manufactures put an expired date on their products, and the governing body does not have the power to change things, what a waste.