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Pharmaceuticals is perhaps the greatest opportunity to rip off the U.S. consumer. Many people need them just to stay alive. So that leads to a few pharmaceutical companies to collude together to keep the prices artificially high.

After all, we either pay their price...or die.

They can be a legalized monopoly thanks to Congress. Congress made it legal for a drug company to PAY another drug company to not manufacture a drug thereby reducing competition.

Pharmaceuticals is perhaps the greatest opportunity to rip off the U.S. consumer. Many people need them just to stay alive. So that leads to a few pharmaceutical companies to collude together to keep the prices artificially high.

This^^^

Most Americans have no idea what an absolute cartel pharmaceuticals are and how much we're being ripped off by them. I travel to India quite often and see how many drugs that are incredibly expensive here can be had for pennies there. Viagra for example, before the patent expired was about $60 a pill in the U.S., in India it was 30 cents and it's the same medicine manufactured in the same plant. I'm sure someone here will counter with "but they've got to recover the price of the research" and while that's true, a quick look at the companies bottom lines will tell you they're doing a lot more than that. The big pharmaceuticals are some of the biggest donors to congress, in return they get to exercise monopoly pricing in the U.S. and drive healthcare costs through the roof.