Canada limits tha maximumn amount that can be charged for drugs - regardless of what the actual cost is. Thus, the profit that is still required to provide those drugs in Canada, and the 'excess' profit needed to fund research for 10 to 20 years before a drug is approved for use anywhere has to come from someplace and that place is the USA. Europe runs under a similar model so in essense all the people in the USA subsidze the rest of the world for medicine.

Our costs here are also higher due to the tort laws on the book - every time someone wins a $100,000,000 award that money HAS to come from all the other people in the USA - and the costs are just passed along in higher prices for drugs - or anything else when these claims are paid out.

If you push the theory that we just drop the price of all drugs to match those in Canada, there would be no profit for the companies at all and they would just go out of businesses. If you then make the argument that the Government could take over all research and production is then given to develop the drugs you can be assured that pretty well nothing would be done at all - and the costs would be even higher to get less drugs. The Government would only fund established limited number of items - and since NOTHING is established - they would in essence fund nothing. Can you see someone saying we will be spending a billion dollars a year for 10 years and at the end say we have nothing to show for it? people would say congress is wasting money and so they could NEVER fund anything since there is nothing to show at the end of it.