[refurb]

The key to your comment is "basic" research.

You can discover a new drug for a few tens of millions of dollars. Now to get that drug to market? You need to cough up a few hundred million dollars.

Discovering a drug doesn't save any patients, getting it to market does and THAT is paid for by private companies.

[Retric]

It costs tens of millions of dollars in large part because US healthcare is so expensive. The actual handing out of drugs is fairly low effort, it's everything else that makes trials so expensive.

[refurb]

It costs 10s of millions of dollars because that is how you prove a drug is safe. That isn't unique to the US. If you want to launch a new drug in the EU, it's not going to cost you any less.

[Retric]

the number of FDA-regulated investigators running trials abroad has increased by 15 percent each year, while the number of U.S.-based investigators declined 5.5 percent annually.

Several forces are pushing trials elsewhere, the researchers noted: cost (a trial at a top medical center in India may cost less than one-tenth per patient what it would cost at a second-tier U.S. center); faster approval times; and less red tape. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcar...

PS: Of note: In the US, sponsors may receive a 50% tax credit for certain clinical trials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial#Economics

[tete]

Which has another problem. Investors tend to force drugs onto the market, even when there is evidence for drugs having bad side effects, like killing you and that's nothing that ever changed.