[jorvi]

It’s just what the market will bear, nothing more nothing less.

Often, identical medicine is sold in the US for 5-20x the price that it is sold for in even North-West EU.

If US customers as a whole really couldn’t pay this, the price would drop.

[elmerfud]

That's not quite true with medicine. If US customers couldn't pay this, as in the insurance companies and or Medicare, then cost might come down but also research and development would effectively halt or other countries would stop getting lower priced drugs. United States pharmaceutical industries subsidize the world healthcare market for drugs.

And you're up there's two things at play the government is subsidizing the cost of drugs but also demanding a lower price. If you're up was the only market or the primary market at the prices they're demanding there would be no more research and development for a great many of the drugs that we have.

[Retric]

US drug prices mostly subsidize US drug advertising. The impact of high drug prices on R&D spending after you take this into account is fairly limited.

[Tostino]

Also, a whole bunch of research is done with public dollars from either universities, or grants to private companies. Those are then always commercialized by a for-profit company.