Cost of developing new drugs may be lower than industry claims: trial

For those in favor of drug companies charging exorbitant amounts of money for life-saving medication in order to recoup their R&D costs (and we'll be generous and believe their reasoning and numbers)... it follows that, once they've recouped their costs, they should lower the price, right?

Yea, just like road and bridge tolls go away once the project that the toll was supposed to pay for completes... Fat chance!

This might be shocking to some, but yes, that should indeed be how it works.

Unfortunately not, It follows that we set the length of drug patents at a high enough level that, on average, drug companies can continue their work of inventing drugs.

In other words, they will sometimes make a unseemly profit on a monopoly position, but at least the existence of that possibility creates the incentive for development of drugs.

The alternative is to kill the whole industry.

Sorry - the world is not ideal.

No.

Because there are infinite hypotheses for drug improvement, disease management, and cure.

And for the company to pursue that research, they need to capitalize on current successes.

The company needs to be able to survive in downturns.

Just like any company.