Perhaps more countries should follow Thailand's approach:
On January 25, 2007, Thailand’s interim government issued compulsory licenses–which require
manufacturers to license generic versions of their patented drugs–for two Western medicines:
Kaletra, an advanced anti-AIDS medicine manufactured by Abbott; and Plavix, a blood-thinning
treatment to help prevent heart disease, produced by the France-based Sanofi-Aventis and U.S.
firm Bristol-Myers Squibb. These attacks were preceded in November 2006 by a violation of
Merck’s patent on the anti-AIDS drug Stocrin.[5] The government threatened to break
patents on eleven more drugs.[6] Explaining the rationale behind Thailand’s decision, health
minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said that “the move is permissible under international trade
rules in the event of national public health emergencies. . . . We have to do this because we
don’t have enough money to buy safe and necessary drugs for the people under the government’s
universal health scheme.”[7]
Perhaps "evergreening" is also an issue in the USA that might keep prices high for a long time?