Access to drugs should be available to everybody, on a need basis, not wealth basis. Just like health care in general (or even infrastructure), pharma research should be financed by taxes.
This way we don't have to worry about new drug discovery drying up because of lack of profits, while at the same time we have a way to allow government funding for actual drugs that could be provided at low cost.
I think this private-public competition will provide both innovation and low prices in the long term.
But maybe government could be more return-on-investment friendly for the citizens who pay taxes and re-route some of that research founds into actually developing the end user drugs. At the same time they could create legal barriers for private pharma from using any tax funded pharma research. That would create some loud screams from the pharma lobby, and we would finally be able to say how valuable the patent supported pharma industry really is. I doubt however we will ever see such day, and patent supported pharma will continue to claim the glory while tax payers silently pays double for medicine. First through taxes and then a second time through the expensive drug prices in the pharmacy.
I tend to view private pharma, as it exists today, as a leech on society, at best. Perhaps destroying it and making it pay it's own way entirely would be for the best.
Yes, in the past, private companies did real work and it was beneficial. But, mostly, they seem to invent cures for problems that get blown way out of proportion thru marketing directly to the public (restless leg syndrome? really?).
At a minimum, let doctors become the filter thru which medicine is prescribed, and put a very heavy penalty in place for pay-to-subscribe.
While the for-profit system has some flaws, at least their motivations are relatively straightforward and when there's a reason to change their policies by discounting or even giving things away free, they can choose to.
If the government tried to do that, it would turn into a multi-month (year?) debate before anything would be done.
I'll take the mythical use of pharma research as a political weapon over the all too real Martin Shkreli phenomenon.
Not all political setups devolve into the chaos experienced by the US.
The US could be unique in that compulsory licensing laws and aggressive patent invalidation don't work--there aren't many desirable foreign patents to invalidate or inventions to compel licensure.