The system stinks. However it costs nearly 1/2 billion bucks to get a new drug on the market.if drug is used and there is a side effect which was barely detected in limited human trials, the damages will be in the multibillions paid out. Or if a competitor comes out with a superior version of the first drug...the originator loses big time.Greed, fear of competitors and protection from damages are 3 very large reasons for rapacious pricing. Also...our bloated government guarantees health payments....gee whiz...what could go wrong?
Finally....if obesity, overuse of alcohol, so called recreational drugs and smoking (all combustibles) and STDs was way lower...our health costs could be drastically lowered also.
I will throw this in the mix: The hate for anything related with Marijuana is there because it really does cure a host of ills that normally are the domain of extremely expensive drugs and treatments. I’m speaking from the personal experiences of friends with serious health conditions cured or mitigated with it.
But onto the liability issue, we were given an ehtics question in high school back in 1970 and it went something like this: Imagine a vaccine being developed that could cure a serious disease like Polio, but every one millionth person that took the treatment actually got polio from the vaccine?
My personal, and my groups, solution was to charge an extra dollar for every use of the drug and that dollar was put into escrow to be handed over to the person that actually caught the disease from the treatment. And everyone that took the vaccine would sign an affidavit agreeing that if they were that unlucky person, that payment would be their full compensation for damages, or they will not be allowed to get the shot.
I don’t think that is really the best solution since treatment could be far more expensive than that payout, but something like that would be a solid solution to mitigate risk without it costing the GNP and still making the drug affordable to those that it would truly help.