TomFromTexas said:

They are two different exemptions from the same federal requirements and they buy different things.

That is correct as far as it goes, and here is where it stops going. Resolution therefore closed the doors unevenly, and the asymmetry follows from the bulks lists. For 503B the shortage clause was the only route to these molecules, so that route shut completely. A 503A pharmacy can still argue a doorway via "component of an approved drug" — but only for the substance in the form present in the approved product, which is exactly where the base-versus-salt argument lives, and it does nothing about the copy restriction, which came back into force on resolution.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

TomFromTexas said:

They are two different exemptions from the same federal requirements and they buy different things.

I read this differently from TomFromTexas, on substance rather than tone. A research-chemical supplier selling lyophilised powder labelled research use only is not compounding and is not claiming to. It is a different legal universe with no pharmacy oversight, no patient relationship and no content guarantee, and conflating the two in these threads helps nobody.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

This one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. The shortage clause is the answer to the second question and it is a subtraction rather than an addition. Both exemptions forbid compounding something that is essentially a copy of a commercially available approved product. A product FDA has listed as in shortage is not treated as commercially available, so listing removed the objection that otherwise blocked compounding. It never created a permission; it withdrew a prohibition, which is why it evaporated the moment the supply fact changed.

Dr.ReproEndo said:

Resolution therefore closed the doors unevenly, and the asymmetry follows from the bulks lists.

True, though the ladder is longer and that is not a neutral detail — six dose steps means six opportunities to stall on the way up, and plenty of people never reach the dose the headline number came from.