Drug Executive: It's a moral requirement to charge patients the highest price

[Angrboda]

I don't know that it's a moral imperative, but it is a business imperative to maximize profits for the benefit of stockholders and that is a moral and legal imperative. I understand we don't want profit to drive the decisions of pharmaceutical companies, but there don't immediately appear particularly good alternatives that I know of. Consumers can put some pressure on manufacturers, but since they have a captive market, that's ineffective. It could be mandated by law and regulated, but that might chill the motivation for spending the money to research and develop new drugs, and that's a lot. There doesn't seem to be an obvious solution, or, at the least, I haven't heard of one.