"West, 30, has had type 1 diabetes since she was three years old. Back in Seattle, where she used to live, she typically paid $70 per month for insulin and another $130 for pump supplies. That was a relative steal in the U.S., made possible by her excellent health insurance, which she got through her employer. But still, it was a financial strain.
In Germany, she pays about €10, roughly $11. Every three months."
The extraordinary claim is that that vast price disparity is in proportion, so the burden of evidence rests on you.
https://accessiblemeds.org/sites/default/files/2018-09/REMS_...
It's a good summary of the costs of one type of overly burdensom regulation in the U.S. drug market, and was cited by the FTC in congressional testimony. There are other problems to be sure, but the anti-competitive effect of our over-wrought regulatory framework is widely recognized to be a problem by both liberal and conservative policy makers.
There's plenty more material out there you're able to use google for five minutes. At this point, though, I'm confident that you're interested only in polemics, rather than actually learning anything about the issue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-humiras-...
"Humira’s price has defied gravity — and been ensconced as a frequent rhetorical target on Capitol Hill — through AbbVie’s aggressive use of patents and deals with generic manufacturers to forestall competition."
"Humira was approved by the FDA in 2002 and its core patents expired in 2016, according to the Biosimilars Council, a division of the Association for Accessible Medicines, which represents generic manufacturers. But AbbVie won dozens of additional patents — what critics call a “patent thicket” — that extended the exclusive market for the drug to as late as 2034, the council said."
I'm not saying that there isn't high costs involved in the approval process, what I'm saying is that it is disproportionate to the price difference. What actually makes a difference is government regulations on another level, mainly price controls, like in Europe.
Just to make it clear, I'm very much in favour of generics, but the focus should be patents and price control, not small fish like REMS (from your link "consumers pay an extra $1.8 billion in out-of-pocket costs.", which furthermore is a number the authors have every interest to inflate) or removing burdensome, but appropriate, approval regulations, possibly threatening public safety.
