You're comparing a measure in dollars with a measure in people. Yes, per capita expenditure on prescription medication is high in the US. Most other countries have a national health care system which negotiates the price for the whole country. The US market is where pharmaceutical companies expect to recoup their R&D costs, which makes drugs more expensive in the US than anywhere else. This effectively means that the US subsidizes drug prices for the rest of the world in exchange for determining which drugs are safe for humans (via the FDA) and getting slightly earlier access to newly developed drugs.

I would restate that to the "US market is where pharmaceutical companies like recoup their executive officer costs, which makes drugs more expensive in the US than anywhere else. The US subsidizes executive salaries for the rest of the world..." http://www.ibtimes.com/healthcare-pharma-ceos-paid-more-top-...

> You're comparing a measure in dollars with a measure in people.

I'm not parent, but I'm sure this is intentional as the consequences of such a scenario are easy to extrapolate...

> The US market is where pharmaceutical companies expect to recoup their R&D costs.

They could do this in two ways - having high margins on their drugs, and/or selling a lot of drugs. It is no surprise to see pharma lobbying against tight laws on prescriptions, or anything that gets in the way of the 'market' getting access to their products. Not coincidentally, the opioid crises means they get to sell more drugs.

I think that they have both high margins on drugs (my gut estimate would be ten times what the rest of the world pays, but it looks like it is ordinarily only 2-5 times [0]) and they're selling a lot of drugs. It is disingenuous to claim that the US consumes 9 times more prescription drugs than the world average. The reality is probably closer to 2-5 times more drugs and that these drugs are 2-5 times more expensive by virtue of being sold in the US.

[0] https://www.vox.com/a/health-prices

Price difference may be a valid argument.

On the other hand in my home country we had some big pharmaceutical companies (compared to the size of the country) exporting drugs world wide. I thought that for example the pain killers I knew as I child would be used everywhere on the world. When I moved to Germany I realized that I was wrong. There are tons of different drugs for the same purpose with the same ingredients sold by different producers. Therefore only becasue you in the US buy some expensive - and highly addictive - pain killers you are not automatically financing the R&D of pain killers sold in Europe by Europian companies to the Europian people.

Let me be a smart ass and improve your calculation:

45% of drug revenue is generated by 5% of earth's population:

45% / 5% = 9

but you do not compare this number to 1 but to

55% of drug revenue is generated by 95% of earth's population:

55% / 95% = 0.58

So a US citizen spends 9 / 0.58 = 15.54 more on drugs as a non US citizen. Even if price difference is a valid argument, this number is still too high.