[arp242]

Yet many other comparable countries pay substantially lower prices, and presumably the drug companies are still making a profit of that.

"If you don't pay us through the nose with billions we'll stop developing drugs" seems like a rather odd argument; disallowing the government from engaging in the free market on price in pretty much any area it would set of all sorts of corruption red flags. This is why all sorts of regulation around public procurements exist in almost any jurisdiction.

If you need money to develop new drugs: fine, this is why things like grants exist. Right now the drug companies want to have the best of all worlds with none of the obligations and downsides: inflated prices from Medicare are just tax subsidies but without any controls or checks or anything.

[willio58]

Exactly. It’s not like we’re saying people in medicine shouldn’t make good money. I’m glad doctors are paid well for example. What we don’t like is lack of price transparency and needlessly expensive medications. We allow drug companies to patent drugs, creating an inherent monopoly on that drug, then allow them to decide on an arbitrary price, usually a massive mark up over a reasonable profit margin. This has to stop and I love that there has been progress on this recently. But we need much much more