It seems even odder considering that many of the pharmaceutical companies are not US based, so it doesn't seem to make sense even from a protectionist standpoin

It seems even odder considering that many of the pharmaceutical companies are not US based, so it doesn't seem to make sense even from a protectionist standpoint. Just as an exercise in cherry-picking, I grabbed the first drug from [1], "Relvar Ellipta", which apparently costs 6.3 times more in the US than the UK. This is despite the fact that the drug is manufactured by GSK [2], which is UK-based. It was developed by Innoviva, though, which is US-based [3]. What this means in terms of price-setting agreements and licensing, though, is not easy to see, and whether research grants would substitute for the expected profits from the pricing discrepencies. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023951/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5023951/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluticasone_furoate/vilanterol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluticasone_furoate/vilanterol [3] http://www.inva.com/contact-us/ http://www.inva.com/contact-us/