Not really, research cost is relatively equal across the globe. The difference is that the USA has a massive middleman in the form of insurance companies who jack up the price. Basically in a lot of other countries, the tax payers basically foot the bill to lower the drug price to be sold to their own citizens, they still pay the same price but it hurt the citizens less.
How do insurance companies jack up the price of research? It's literally scientist's salaries and equipment, insurance should have no effect on it.
And if you're talking about medical costs in the US, it isn't insurance companies that cause healthcare to be so expensive in the US, nor is it lack of public investment into healthcare.
After a drug got developed, it belong to the companies who developed it. However, these companies also work with insurance companies to distribute these drugs. The insurance companies would then used a bunch of different strategies to increase the prices or incentive people to buy the new, more expensive drug. A common strategy is the insurance companies would demand a huge payout from the company in exchange for pushing the new drug to a more "favorable" spot in the insurance company premium chart. Pharmacy company would then lum this payout into their research cost and thus, increase their expected return. So research cost isn't just scientists salary, equipment cost but also the money they need to pay the middleman to help sell their product. Meanwhile, the insurance companies for their part push patient and hospital into using the more expensive new drugs over the generic old drugs regardless of effectiveness.
In other countries, generally, the government negotiate the price of drug and medical procedure with hospital and companies, capping the price at affordable level. No system like that exist in the USA which allow companies and hospital to jack up the price however then want. In fact, insurance companies actually make the situation worst since insurance companies would charge hospital huge fee to "redirect" more patients for the hospitals while the hospitals jack up the price to offset the fee that paid to the insurance companies.
Those are commercial costs, not R&D costs. Rebates, formulary access, sales and distribution sit on the commercial side of the business; R&D is discovery, trials, scientists, labs, regulatory work, etc.
The distinction matters because commercial spending is there to generate revenue, while R&D is an investment that reduces current profitability in exchange for future products. Higher commercial returns can therefore support more R&D, but that doesn’t mean the commercial costs themselves are "research costs".
Also, insurers generally do the opposite of what you’re describing: they use formulary control and rebates to negotiate down the net price they pay. The US system can create distorted list prices and rebate incentives, but insurers aren’t simply pushing drug prices up and then calling the difference R&D.
Also, companies can’t just raise prices indefinitely in a competitive market. High pharmaceutical prices are sustainable mainly where competition is limited, often because patents, regulatory exclusivity, slow generic entry or other barriers restrict substitutes. That’s very different from insurers simply deciding to make drugs expensive.
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u/PleasantBus5583 8h ago
Apparently, healthy people are bad for business