“Research and development is only about 17 percent of total spending in most large drug companies,” he [Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management at John Hopkins University], says. “Once a drug has been approved by the FDA, there are minimal additional research and development costs so drug companies cannot justify price increases by claiming research and development costs.” Qtd. in a 2019 CNBC article.
I’d like to continue the conversation from a recent post that focused on why millions of us carry medical debt in the United States. It makes sense, then, to drill down on the cost of prescription drugs, because that cost can be the largest part of any medical bill, particularly hospital stays, and thus lead to medical debt charged on high interest credit cards or never ending predatory loans.
We know prescription drug prices in the United States are the highest in the world among comparable, wealthy nations. In fact, money spent on prescription drugs by both insurance companies and out-of-pocket by consumers is close to double that of other, similar countries. But why?
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