It’s no use expecting moral behaviour from a for-profit pharma corporation, which is an inherently amoral entity. You have to utilise incentives and regulation

It’s no use expecting moral behaviour from a for-profit pharma corporation, which is an inherently amoral entity. You have to utilise incentives and regulation to keep prices down. One option is to adjust patent law to enable generic manufacturers to create competition. The downside of this is the generic pharma companies are usually off-shore (more profit that way) and also seem to just pretend to make the actual drug with some regularity (also more profit that way). Another option is for the US government to negotiate drug prices. The US market for medicine is so large that they would have incredible power to cut good deals. The downside to this option is that it will inevitably lead to some form of corruption eg. the drug negotiators don’t try too hard so they can get a cushy job at the drug company next year in their drug negotiating unit. Anyway, I am fairly sure the latter option will happen soon, perhaps for some group of essential medicines.