There's no excuse for drug companies to charge as much as they do. Why do drugs cost so much here in the U.S.?

1. Our country has under 5% of the world's population and 70% of the lawyers. No further details are necessary on this point.

2. Years of research and testing cost a lot, and drug companies have to find a way to recover their money. To do so, they put that much more money into advertising so everyone will run to their doctor to demand the latest cure-all (like the social anxiety drug that makes you the life of the party, with the slight side effects of dry mouth and diarrhea). It's not coincidence that drug prices started rising so sharply when they started advertising their latest and greatest drugs on TV. I never saw a single prescription drug ad on TV when I was growing up (1970's/80's), but now I can't go 30 minutes without seeing some woman praising the new herpes treatment that has her back to doing the inverted crab walk with random men in THREE days instead of the FIVE days she had to wait when she took some old drug.

3. Drug companies can sell drugs in other countries before they're available here, and can do so without having to go through the bureaucracy of the FDA. Not that I'm against testing drugs before approving them, but the delays are sometimes ten years. Ridiculous.

4. Drug companies have to pay for the drugs that didn't work, too. If a drug in development doesn't work right and can't be sold, they don't get a rebate check for the research and testing that went into designing it. Like they say in the oil business, when you buy a gallon of gas, you're paying for the dry wells, too.