[Mastador1]

There is a difference between just compensation and outright greed, there are drugs that have been on the market for many years that still are overpriced. Fair or not Americans pay 30 to 50% more for meds than those in say Canada or Europe.

[Wiser now]

That’s because Americans are subsidizing their price controls.

[arthurus]

No other country permits patent pricing. All require generic pricing. Some by law will copy patent drugs and sell them at generic prices if the Drug companies won't sell to them at the generic rate. Generic pricing is profitable to the drug companies if the R&D is paid off already. The US is the only market that permits patent pricing of drugs during the patent period and drug companies must pay for R&D from sales in the American market. In fact all drug companies in the world do R&D for the American market because if they had to depend on other markets they could not stay in business with the huge losses attendant on generic only sales. The higher prices for some drugs after they come off of patent is a market phenomenon. The prices are the market clearing prices. Read Henry Hazlitt, or Ludwig von Mises or Friedman or Hayek or etc.

If we pass laws making these new drugs generic as soon as produced then R&D will stop. Many miracle drugs in the pipeline will never exit the pipeline. This is, in fact, what I expect to eventually come about. A socialized medical system will not pay for R&D except possibly for government R&D of antibiotics when the rulers realize that without replacements for constantly fading antibiotics their own lives will be more precarious. Government R&D will only happen when old antibiotics are past replacement time because that is government work and they will always be in very short supply so will be rationed to the "deserving," i.e. those who rule.