It's really not. Some country has to provide financial incentives for companies to develop new drugs - a multi million dollar task - and the USA is the country that subsidiaries the rest of the world

I've seen this said a bunch of times but never anything to actually back it up. The fact that big pharma companies tend to have fantastic margins and spend similar amounts on R&D as they do on marketing makes me think that it's probably bollocks.

The idea that big pharma companies are happily scalping Americans just so they can provide drugs to countries that can't actually afford them is just... absurd.

Here is a recent blog post that has some references to economics research papers around this general topic, but likely not directly addressing your exact claim. Nonetheless, you may find it interesting: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/07/reverse-voxsplaining-br...

Grandparent is correct.

For GSK: R&D was 15% of their budget, while 'selling, general and administration' was 39%.[1]

[1]http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/07/19/where-gs...

That's a nice (and popular) story but it really isn't as simple as that. Not only does the accounting get a bit creative, but also the research is more expensive to do in the US for partially for precisely the same reasons that the health care is (a lot of the cost of R&D goes directly into the health care system). Chicken, meet egg.

Even without this, drug development cost doesn't get anywhere close to accounting for the whole cost difference.