Finally, the drug companies do earn high profits. But that's not a bad thing. High profits attract capital, which means the drug companies can afford to undertake expensive research. I can't think of an industry I'd more like to be profitable than the drug industry. There are no simple solutions to the problem of high drug prices.
Price regulation is a classic example.
Drug price regulation will bring down current prices at the cost of stifling innovation. Regulation per se doesn't cost the state anything, other than the administrative costs of regulation, which is what makes it so appealing to politicians. Its hard to know what options will be foreclosed by poorly thought-out solutions. Like other difficult public-policy issues, there are tradeoffs. Adopting a policy without thinking through the consequences may provide short-term benefits, but the costs may be much higher than we expected.