It’s market forces at work, DonaldC. Drug with limited use (can’t use it for headaches!) still costs almost $1B to develop. Patent life is limited (and much of it is eaten up by the development phase; actual time-on-market patent life is probably very short).
You want the best stuff? You gotta pay for the risks involved in coming up with it. You want cheaper stuff? Live with less efficacy and fewer choices.
Or we could do what Europe does, which is extend the patent life of drugs, so that companies can lower the prices as they have longer to recoup. But oops, Obama and the Congress already ruled that possibility out.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Socialism is a big lie.
And they think Obamacare is going to pay for a $4000 drug at her age/??
I am not even sure they would for someone that was 30 years old.
What Europe does is get cheap drugs while US citizens pay the full price of R&D.
We should allow re-importation and the prices in Canada and Europe would rise and our prices would come down. We are subsidizing socialized medicine in Europe and Canada.