If you go and read the news on a daily basis...the manipulation and shortage-gimmick is being used on a regular basis now (not just in Europe but in the US as well). All of these companies have figured out ways to make you pay the maximum possible price for a drug.
You can get on a plane and fly into Greece or Albania....to buy what you’d buy in the US for half (sometimes even a quarter) of what you’d typically pay.
It’s the capitalist system at work and they know that they have one-of-a-kind products. The state-care systems (again, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the US or Europe) are limiting what they will pay for particular drug....so you the consumer will have to dig out the cash needed to make up the difference.
“It’s the capitalist system at work”
There is no such thing as “the capitalist system.”
Read Hayek, “The Fatal Conceit.”
https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/fatal-conceit-errors-socialism
It costs 1 to 3 billion dollars (That's B, billion) to go through all the hoops that the FDA requires to approve a new drug in the US. The requirements include patenting the drug, so that anyone can make it after the patent runs out. Most of the patent time limit of 20 years is consumed by the approval process. That gives only a few years to recover the costs of the development and approval process.
The fewer people that need the drug, the higher the price must be to recover that cost. If those costs aren't borne by the consumer who needs the drugs, who then should pay them?