Chemo drug shortage

I learned during my round of chemo today that, due to a national shortage of leucovorin, I wouldn't be getting any this week (and who knows if ever again). My wonderful oncologist did a pretty good job of convincing me that this would not have a serious effect on my survival and life expectancy... but he also acknowledged that it's in the protocol for a reason, and that if he had it, he would want me to be taking it. The more frightening side of it, for me, is that there could be shortages just as easily of the other medications, the ones where it would seriously cut my survival odds.

I wrote my Congresswoman when I first started looking at oncologists and heard of these crazy widespread drug shortages, which appear to be caused by the bizarre way the U.S. funds medical care. (There's no shortage in Asia, Europe, or Canada.) That first oncologist told me my first priority in choosing a place for chemo should be whether they could guarantee me a six-month supply of the recommended regimen. In my political letter (one of the first I've ever written), I asked what the heck was going on. Here, in a first-world country, people are dying because factories aren't bothering to make the drugs that they need to live? Is there no role for the government here? Weren't politicians yammering about invented "death panels" during the health care law debates? Seems to me that letting people die because there isn't enough profit in making their drugs is pretty death-panel-y all on its own already; why aren't there big yelling fights about the un-American nature of that?

I'm so bothered that politics and money are keeping me from a medication that I am supposed to be taking to help save my life.