Chairman Rick Scott, Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand Press Nation’s Largest Pharmaceutical Distributors, GPOs on Import Ban Exemptions After Executives Confirm Buying Flagged[...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Chairman Rick Scott and Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging took the latest step in their monthslong effort to investigate and shore up vulnerabilities in America's pharmaceutical supply chain. The nation's largest pharmaceutical distributors admitted to actively purchasing and distributing drugs from facilities that operate under FDA import ban exemptions.

In follow-up letters to the presidents and chief executive officers of the nation's largest group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and pharmaceutical distributors, the chairman and ranking member requested information on what they share with buyers, what access they have to FDA inspection records, and whether healthcare systems are being left in the dark about the drugs they purchase.

Chairman Rick Scott and Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand wrote, "As chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, we are dedicated to ensuring that every American has access to safe, high-quality, and reliable medications…Strengthening transparency and oversight is essential to ensuring patient safety and upholding national security."

Delays in information sharing are not a hypothetical threat to patient safety. In 2021, a widely used blood pressure medication was found to be contaminated with nitrosamines, a probable human carcinogen. The contamination was traced to an API manufacturer in China operating under an FDA import alert exemption. The delay in sharing inspection findings allowed contaminated medication to reach patients, ultimately triggering a massive recall.

BACKGROUND:

Today's letters follow the Committee's initial October 2025 inquiry to distributors and GPOs on vulnerabilities in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain. This comes in light of the Committee's work to examine how overreliance on foreign manufacturers and gaps in regulatory oversight may put American patients at risk of relying on unsafe or unavailable medications, and the release of their investigative report, which exposes America's harmful overreliance on foreign-manufactured generic drugs.

The letters also build on Chairman Scott and Ranking Member Gillibrand's January 2026 hearing entitled "Truth in Labeling: Americans Deserve to Know Where Their Drugs Come From," underscoring how little visibility purchasers, providers, and patients have into the origins of generic drugs and the sources of their active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The letters ask executives directly whether country-of-origin labeling would improve their ability to purchase domestically manufactured medications.

Click here to read the letters sent to GPO executives.

Click here to read the letters sent to pharmaceutical distributors executives.

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