News that the Federal Trade Commission is launching a probe of companies that help buy and distribute the bulk of medicines sold to U.S. hospitals is welcome — and hopefully will unravel and inject transparency into a procurement and maintenance process upon which few Americans reflect until they are affected directly by a medicine not being available.

Hopefully, what is uncovered will help end medicine shortages or reduce them dramatically, when stacked against supply records compiled perhaps a decade or two ago.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the FTC “is exploring whether the companies that broker drug purchases for hospitals, along with middlemen that ship the medicines, have misused their market power to push down prices of generic drugs so much that some manufacturers can’t profit and have stopped production, causing shortages.”

The inquiry will be shining a spotlight on a little-noticed corner of the drug-supply chain — the “drug middlemen,” as FTC Chair Lina Kahn described them.

According to the Feb. 15 Journal report, insufficient supplies of what it said were critical chemotherapies forced doctors to ration supplies last year. “Many patients weren’t able to get generic chemotherapy drugs called carboplatin and cisplatin, forcing them to go longer between treatments or turn to second-best alternatives,” the Journal said.

Regarding the FTC probe, one anesthesiologist remarked, “It’s about time. Hopefully something will come of this.”

This is welcome news for many.