If you didn't develop a drug or pay for its development, but get access to it one day at only the cost of manufacture, then you're getting the R&D for free.
All of the drug companies you mentioned, while not founded in America, do most of their R&D in America.
You're right about many immigrants developing those drugs, but they came to America to do so. You should ask yourself "why?"
For the record, I'm an immigrant to the US.
Everybody gets the free access (including other American companies). Like you get free access to European drugs, once the patents expire. But all this is played into the cost of the drug while the patent holds. Nobody sells drugs at a cost, so there's that...
>All of the drug companies you mentioned, while not founded in America, do most of their R&D in America.
That's just wrong.
>You're right about many immigrants developing those drugs, but they came to America to do so. You should ask yourself "why?"
More cushioned life, compared to a place like China (at least of yore), and opportunities to make it big in business.
Sorry, what?
My country doesn't have any "free access" to drug innovation, it pays mucho dinero to buy drugs, and American companies hold and enforce all kinds of patents on them.
It's also not some "one way" innovation street. Tons of medical/drug innovation, especially all the major "low hanging fruits" (which make up for most of modern health benefits) up to the mid-20th century came from outside the USA.
And that's not counting all the major European etc drug companies GlaxoSmithKline (British), La Roche (Swiss), Novartis (Swiss), Sanofi-Aventis (French), Bayer (German), Boehringer Ingelheim (German), etc.
Of the top 5 grossing drug companies, only 1 is American (#1 Pfizer). And the revenues of #1 are close to the revenues of #2 and #3, (45 vs 40 and 38 billion) so it's not like some great disparity where Pfizer takes all.
Not to mention that a lot of "USA innovations" were created by immigrants, whose country of origin paid for their raising, education, etc, even up to their undergraduate degree, and then they went to the USA and innovated as researchers...
Slow down with the chauvinism...