[wjnc]

I think this is mostly true. Perhaps truer still is that the US willingly had rules that massively reduced their market power in negotiations, which in a game of parallel negotiations leads to the obvious price discrimination. You cannot blame big pharma for giving a client willing to pay any price without negotiations what the client wants: high prices.

One counterpoint is that in my country we’ve successfully reduced prices for medicines a lot by strong negotiations in the last decade. We are last in line among western nations for medicines now. Shortages all around.