China is the United States’ pharmacy. It’s time we changed that.

OPINION:

America has found itself entrenched in an issue that poses a threat to our safety and national security: China has become our pharmacist. It decides whether Americans have the prescription and over-the-counter drugs we need to get and stay healthy.

The U.S. is reliant on China, India and other international partners for a large majority of its medicines, whether it’s key starting Materials, (KSM), active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) or later stages of production.

Our country has allowed China to take over the American pharmaceutical industry. This has led to a range of concerns, including safety or efficacy issues with specific products, economic disadvantages and the threats and realities of purposefully adversarial measures used against us.

We saw the negative impacts of this reliance firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a conversation I had with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the United States saw a downtick in the volume of personal protective equipment (PPE) and pharmaceuticals coming to our country from China in the fall of 2019. We didn’t learn about COVID-19 until January 2020, when public health officials identified the source of a mysterious pneumonia-like outbreak in China.

China knew there was an unidentified sickness in its own country, concealed it and then withheld medical supplies so the United States was less prepared when COVID-19 hit our shores.

Globally and domestically, this is just one example of how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed our supply chain vulnerabilities.

If past is prologue, we must learn from this public health crisis and take the proper economic and national security steps to prevent another supply chain crunch, saving American and our allies’ lives in the process.

That is why the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health is examining opportunities to best incentivize and establish a reliable, safe, resilient and efficient health care supply chain.

We look forward to hearing from experts and discussing the opportunities and challenges around bringing our drugs, medical devices and medical products and supplies back home. There seems to be widespread recognition from both stakeholders and the public of the need for a comprehensive evaluation of our current supply chain dependence. We are taking the steps now to do just that.

Our constituents are asking for more transparency and accountability in our domestic supply chain. This must involve providing the right environment for partners to invest here in the United States — either bringing their capacities back home or bolstering already existing domestic capacities.

Examining policies that support onshoring U.S.-based manufacturing and bolstering our domestic supply chain is critical to protecting our national security and ensuring access to safe, secure and reliable medicines and health care products for Americans.

If your pharmacist withheld — or even threatened to withhold — critical supplies from you when you were sick, you’d find a new pharmacy. It’s time for the United States to quit settling for less.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misspelled Rep. Buddy Carter’s name in the byline. 

• Rep. Buddy Carter represents Georgia’s 1st District and chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. He is a career pharmacist.