There was a programme on R4 about NICE, drug companies and finance in health care a month or two back. I discovered two new (to me) things. First it's common

There was a programme on R4 about NICE, drug companies and finance in health care a month or two back. I discovered two new (to me) things. First it's common for drug companies to tweak patent protected items suspiciously near end of patent - to find a new use, or reformulate a tablet as a capsule - to buy more patent period. Second in the case of off patent medicines, some are harder to make or not prescribed widely enough for the generic makers to bother with. These seem to be the things at risk of price gouging. There was an example of something off patent sold by Pfizer to another company who now charge 10x more, as there is no generic alternative. That's now at the competition authorities. So we mitigate a lot of this, but we apparently don't avoid it entirely. EDIT: Programme page with mp3: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07j7j6m http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07j7j6m