You're right that a drug company will always charge as much as it can, so the US price of a drug will not be affected by the price it can charge elsewhere. However, the chance a drug is developed in the first place is dependant on the total size of the market for that drug. If the potential profit for, say, a breast cancer cure is $300 billion rather than $100 billion then there is more chance that a cure will be found.

No, I didn't mean anything like that. I have no idea how you got that out of what I said.

> By the way, aren't there many people here that say it's the legal duty of the directors of a company to do everything they can to maximize shareholders' value?

Yes, and it is.

> Wouldn't THAT (make less money than legally possible in the US) be a violation of that supposed duty?

Yes, but it's not happening, so I don't see your point.

You wrote: "This means that pharmaceutical companies have to recoup their fixed costs (R&D) and generate their real profits from the US market" (emphasis mine). What did you mean with that phrase, if not that if they could make their real profits outside the US pharmaceutical companies wouldn't have to recoup their costs in the US?