Granted, but when do we know they have recouped their research and approval costs and start making a real profit? Accountants are wizzes at hiding stuff in spreadsheets...............
How much Pharma R&D is directly funded by the US government? We know the government gave the pharmaceutical companies billions to fund Covid development, plus the exemption from liability lawsuits was worth billions and perhaps trillions. Add to that, the federal government bought the entire supply of product for two years at a profit to the companies. The savings in marketing and advertising costs was also worth billions to the companies.
Consider also most pharmaceutical products used to be manufactured in the US and Puerto Rico. Big Pharma has outsourced those factories to foreign nations resulting in the loss of American jobs and putting the US at strategic risk in the event of future conflicts with nations where our drugs are now produced. Big Pharma earned obscene profits through outsourcing at the expense of the American worker and our national security.
In addition, the federal government spends billions on healthcare and biomedical research at the nations universities and teaching hospitals. The results of that research are monetized by the universities and the collaborating pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers. They receive a free ride on this research wheres the American consumer then pays through the nose for the products created from the research they funded, while foreign consumers receive steeply reduced prices.
Also consider the substantial R&D tax credits the big pharmaceutical companies receive which are in reality another taxpayer subsidy for their research costs.
Cry me a river on big Pharma and its apologists. American pharmaceutical companies are in many ways corporate grifters, sucking on the taxpayer teat and then turning around and charging the American taxpayer the highest prices in the world. This price gouging allows them to charge lower prices to the wealthy government controlled health care systems in Europe and Canada as well as third world countries.
Rand Paul can preach free enterprise all he wants. Pull all of the direct and indirect subsidies from Big Pharma, including their blanket protection from lawsuits, and let the companies charge whatever they wish for products developed 100% on their own dime. However, as long as the federal government is subsidizing R&D directly and indirectly, giving them favorable tax treatment, and protecting them from product liability, the pharmaceutical market is not a free market and the government is right to demand drug pricing to US consumers be lower than pricing to foreign consumers.