Say a big pharma company spends $100M on a new drug - R&D, trials, certifications in US. They sell it for $100 a tablet in US for a couple years, at which point

Say a big pharma company spends $100M on a new drug - R&D, trials, certifications in US. They sell it for $100 a tablet in US for a couple years, at which point they have paid off their investments and made a small profit. Now they negotiate deliveries of the drug to say Canada. First Canada's drug administration confirms the drug is approved by the FDA and approves it for use in Canada without further test, trials, etc. Second as the production costs almost nothing any price the pharma company gets is almost pure profit. So the price in Canada ends up at $1 a tablet. Now think what would've happened if US didn't exist. All the R&D, trials, etc. would have to be paid by all the other countries in the world. There would be far fewer new drugs being developed and they would cost a lot more.