Compounding pharmacies are necessary as drs often write some unusual scripts. One example is with cancer patients dealing with thrush drs will often write for a combination of malox, a pain killer, and its been too long to remember what else is in it. It is used as a mouthwash/rinse, no company makes it and it must be compunded. Another good example is many cf patients were using a compounding pharmacy to mix HTS before it was commercially available. They are typically used to produce drugs for injection but can also compound and make capsule form drugs as well.
As with anything, there is going to be some pharmacy that won't take care of business, so some sort of regulation is needed, but the article was hinting at the notion of shutting them down. I don't think thats going to be productive towards anything other than making needed medications unavailable. Pharmacy techs are allowed to do a degree of the compounding work under the "supervision" of a pharmacist, a pharmacy tech has no real formal training. To become certified you pass a test filled with middle school level math, a vocabulary list of drugs, and an understanding of what you can't do. That sounds like a place to start to me.
