FDA approval process requires a ton of upfront R&D resources with zero guarantees. This is mostly a good thing but it's not black and white. Malpractice law is another example of regulations driving the price up, we can't get rid of malpractice law but the structure matters.

I don't agree with the poster above, but one common cited example is that emergency rooms are required to treat all patents regardless of their ability to pay. So they have to raise prices for everyone else in order to manage the risk that someone won't pay.

Here's an article if you're interested:

https://mises.org/wire/how-government-regulations-made-healt...

I always thought the high prices in the US was because of not having universal healthcare - when you are buying for millions of people, you can have lower prices? It's not like the US is the only country that regulates drugs?

United Healthcare, a US insurer, covers 40M people. That's bigger than the entire population of Canada, but Canada has cheaper drugs.

Good point, thanks

For an extensive article on how regulation dramatically increases health care costs:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...

We can't import generics from Europe leading to shortages.

Wait are you serious or is this incredibly subtle sarcasm?

For higher drug costs, see "Regulation and Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Peltzman, which shows through statistics that the 1962 FDA regulations have resulted in a large increase in drug costs with no net increase in safety. (While more bad drugs have been blocked, this is counterbalanced by good drugs taking much longer to be approved. Unknown is what drugs were never developed because of the much increased cost of the regulations.)