Even if big pharma innovates more, patent manipulation and high prices reduce access so new drugs don’t solve

For two decades, the US government barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices. At the same time, drug companies have gamed the patent system to prevent competitors from selling lower-cost generic versions of their products. Meanwhile, for decades drugmakers’ congressional allies blocked legislation designed to help pharmacists and wholesalers import medicines at lower world-market prices and sell them at discounted rates in the United States.

The end result: Americans pay the highest prices per capita among residents of wealthy countries for prescription drugs — even though the American public subsidizes research and development (R&D) costs on essentially every drug approved for sale in the United States.

Pharmaceutical costs are one major reason why the US health care system is the most expensive in the world and yet consistently delivers poor outcomes.

Put simply, higher drug costs kill people.