Yet Novartis only has 15% margins. Not shabby but not exactly living large, and much worse than tech companies. You aren’t going to move the needle on drug cost

Yet Novartis only has 15% margins. Not shabby but not exactly living large, and much worse than tech companies. You aren’t going to move the needle on drug costs by making those margins 0%, and no amount of wishing will change that. That’s math. I guess you could pay people less at Novartis but it probably won’t have the desired effect. These things cost a certain amount of money to produce. What you are complaining about is how that cost is distributed among the people that might consume it. However, the implications of redistributing that cost are not particularly palatable either. Ultimately, someone has to pay for development and there are only so many places you can hide the necessary revenue that no one wants to pay. These costs don’t automagically disappear through political sleight of hand.