Sadly it is not about how much manufacturing and research costs.
But about how much they can profit from it.
But about how much they can profit from it.
The set of people with the condition probably does. I wonder if a kickstarter for generics would be successful?
I remember reading a book about the history of some (famous) chemical company in the U.S. – Dow? Dupont? – doing exactly what I described to compete with the at-the-time existing German chemical company cartel.
Plus there's the issue of whether a drug can remain safe to use after long periods of time at all.
In this particular case, there are actors for whom the profit would not be directly generated by sales of goods, but by the amount they save elsewhere in their operations - which, depending on various factors, might actually be multiples.
You could find a profit maximising capitalist who would be happy to enter the market and compete for a fraction of the outrageous profits - that would make a lot more money than paying to invest as is more usual. In theory there only needs to be a handful or so and that would be enough to bring the market back down close to cost of production.
However, it seems likely that government regulation would disrupt that process somehow, otherwise it would have happened by now.
You charge robbery rates for drugs A, C and F and I'll take B, D and E.
We both make lots of money and don't have to worry about each other.
Competition assumes sellers don't collaborate and negotiate but they do all the time.
How do street drug dealers compete with each other? Not by lowering prices. No. They actually attempt to monopolize their territories by either eliminating or merging with their competitors, until a stable state is reached.
They then set their prices to maximize margins and profits. This continues until something happens to destabilize the market, at which point there is some kind of struggle or even war, which stops when another stable state is reached by eliminating or merging the competitors.
Without regulation to prevent the creation of monopolies and cartels, this happens in legitimate businesses just as much as street drug dealers.
Competition by lowering price does happen, but when it does, it is part of the unstable phase that ends when another stable monopoly or cartel forms, at which point margins go right back up.
The elimination part of that is important though. If companies were allowed to round up a group of the boys and go break some kneecaps when the boss didn't like something then it is true there won't be a lot of competition.
But in civilised country that isn't an option. Nobody wants that level of deregulation - basic policing of physical safety is something of a given. People are somewhat protected by law in their attempts to compete.
But companies do things like dump product to drive a competitor bankrupt, and then raise their prices back up. After that happens a few times, people get the message that there is no money to be made competing with them.
Or they play patent games and litigate the competition either out of business, or strongarm them into joining a patent cartel.
The tools may be different, but without specific anti-monopoly and anti-cartel regulation that is enforced aggressively, companies will ruthlessly drive markets towards monopolies or cartels.
It's not just prices as well. The US stands also out as being one of three countries that allows direct consumer drug advertisements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-to-consumer_advertising...