Al Gore has caught the spirit. He's eagerly denouncing the drug companies as too powerful and greedy. Well, it's mainly drug companies. A stubborn problem is that most experimental drugs fail and never come to market. Of those that succeed, the average development time is about 15 years.
Some drugs are barely profitable.
The industry earns more than half its profits from its best-selling 10 percent of drugs, conclude studies by economist Henry Grabowski of Duke University. The government could adopt prices controls. Patent protection could be shortened. But if profits drop significantly, drug development will suffer. Listening to Gore, you might think that price-gouging already had impoverished many Americans.