[joe_the_user]

It's a matter of principle. Perverse principle but principle: "Why would we? [lower the price] Pricing shouldn't be a political decision. It should be a rational decision based on merits and values," he said. "Hundreds of millions of investor money has gone into the company, and if there is no return for those investments, there will be no new drugs because nobody's going to do that in the future, right?""

Which is to say that you have an investor group that expects to either be paid or they'll take their medicine away and the public be damned.

Or perhaps a perverse process. The system is how you get new, actually amazing drugs. The system is also how actual health care has become really terrible in the US in particular.

[nine_k]

Buying the rights on drugs like this, and more important expensive drugs, an license them under a freedom-protecting license (similar to GPL) could be a major application of charity funds.

[s1artibartfast]

You would still have to raise several hundred millions of dollars of funding to reconduct development and clinical trials for the drug after securing the IP.

Clinical trial data and manufacturing know how cant be leveraged from the original approval.

It is incredibly difficult to get investors to fund a second round of development for a product that made it to market and still failed.

You might say this is an opportunity for the government to step in as investor, but they have little interest, knowing that they could use the same money to save many more lives in other areas.

[s1artibartfast]

The investors didn't want to risk throwing more good money after bad.

No other companies were interested in buying the drug and it required more costly trials and upkeep.

You drop the price and buyers are even less interested, meanwhile the costs keep coming in.

I think the mistake people are making is assuming the drug was in a position to be revenue positive at a lower cost when it wasn't.