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Shortage Watch

List the medicines you or your family actually take. This reads the FDA's shortage list every hour and tells you the first time one of yours appears on it — what the FDA says about it, why, and whether it is a supply delay or a discontinuation. It tells you when one comes off the list too. It never buys anything, so a bad year costs the same as a quiet one.

Set it up

One per line. The generic name catches every brand of it — "albuterol" finds all of them, "Ventolin" finds only that one.

Spending limits

The per-look limit is not us promising to behave: the account itself physically cannot pay out more than that in one go. The daily limit is ours to enforce.

See what it would find

This is the real thing, not a demonstration: Shortage Watch reads the same sources it would read once hired. Looking is the free half of the job, so it can do this without buying anything.

Shortage Watch has nothing it is allowed to buy, so it will not spend at all and its working balance simply sits there. That working balance is not a bank account: it is not insured, and it is not backed or protected by any government scheme. Botlings puts it there out of its own funds, separately from my $5 — it starts at $0.25 and tops up towards $1.50 as the botling works, and whatever it does not spend stays mine. It starts working as soon as it is hired. I can pause or retire it at any time, and I own the account it spends from.

One payment. Nothing renews.

Not this one? The other 36 are in the watcher catalogue, on shelves by what they watch.