> The government approved treatments are all strictly priced.

I kind of like Japan's system based on what I've read so far, but I'm still not sure of one thing:

Does regulated pricing have a chilling effect on drug companies?

It seems like it would be impossible for a Japanese drug company to be viable if the government gets to fix the price so that anyone can afford it seeing as new drugs can cost billions to develop.

No, it doesn't have a chilling effect because pharmaceuticals are a global market. The dirty little secret is that the US having crazy rates like "$2000 for two ibuprofen" as mentioned in another anecdote in this thread is exactly what enables price fixing in most of the rest of the world to be functional.

The disaster that is the US healthcare system is architected to eliminate any concept of price transparency to directly confound free market processes, and is costly to line the pockets of middlemen and pharmaceutical and medical/biotech firms, because their pockets aren't being lined elsewhere in what is an essential and large global industry. The US effectively subsidizes healthcare around the world by paying out the nose, and the entire thing is perpetrated against the American people by intentionally introducing smoke and mirrors to the process.

It would be astoundingly easy to fix. All you'd need is a law/regulation that says drug companies can't charge US customers more than the average price for the same drug in say, Canada, France, Britain, Australia, and Japan.

Suddenly we'd be paying a lot less and if we are subsidizing the cost it'll for them to raise prices in those other countries.

I'm pretty sure "we're subsidizing foreigners" is one of those smokescreens.

It's almost Trumpian in its vague, implausible and detail-free appeal to the baser instincts in order deflect from clear and obvious fraud.

The government gets to fix a price doesn't mean the drug company has to make it (or exist), right? So presumably the price would be set at some point where there is still a profit to be made.