[ls612]

A very large portion of R&D costs for drugs are in doing phase 3 clinical trials. These will always be expensive because you have to recruit and closely monitor several thousand people with a relevant condition to determine if a treatment is better than existing alternatives and what sort of side effects a medication has. Many drugs which were developed by academia using federal dollars and which passed phase 1 and 2 trials fail phase 3. Pretty much every phase 3 trial is paid for by private industry.

[Retric]

I don’t agree that phase 3 trials must be that expensive.

Currently they cost ~19 million each which is frankly not that big of a deal. A larger issue is only ~15% of drugs make it through the process. With ~20 new drugs a year this only adds up to 2.5 billion per year which a frankly a drop in the bucket compared to drug costs.