I think something that hasn't been mentioned is how much they spent to develop the drug, and how much they expect to recoup.
If someone has to take a drug for 3 years and pays 195,000 dollars, and there are tens of thousands of patients, they can certainly price it lower than that.
If the price per year is 1950 (3%) and a million people are using the drug, that that 1.95 billion dollars. Per Year.
That is a fair point, and I do think the drug industry should be rewarded for making a product that saves lives.
If we were making the comparison to the software industry again we wouldn't make that same comparison, we would just have the people close up shop and start another startup when their product fails and they fail to pivot.
I guess the analogy just starts falling apart there.
That's what India is doing it's allowing other businesses to step in and compete in production of the drug. If the original drug company can't compete then that's not the governments fault.
Obviously that isn't what you mean though, your talking about the competing from start to finish of a drug, well lets say a company invests in producing an equivalent cancer drug that doesn't infringe on the original patent. Now we have these two drugs that are effectively the same and they both compete and the price lowers down to the point were they are both making enough profit to support their business without over the top profits on that drug. Congratulations you've got to the point that the Indian government wants and all it took was a huge investment in an otherwise redundant drug.
Since the Indian government can't force the company to sell the drugs at the appropriate price they have to rely on the threat of letting other companies sell the drug at an even lower price and hope the company plays ball. The whole point behind intellectual property is that both the creator and the public benefit, if the public isn't benefiting then they will not respect intellectual property.
If someone has to take a drug for 3 years and pays 195,000 dollars, and there are tens of thousands of patients, they can certainly price it lower than that.
If the price per year is 1950 (3%) and a million people are using the drug, that that 1.95 billion dollars. Per Year.