In order to comply with the FDA and foreign regulations to market a pharmaceutical, your company needs to hire personnel for the sole purpose of testing that these products work as intended (quality systems).

The government doesn't subsidize anywhere close to the salaries of this department, or any of the others needed to manufacture and market a pharmaceutical.

These companies are the ones funding most of the research as well, hoping they will make a discovery that leads to a profit. They are losing money during this entire process until they can market their drug.

By keeping their practice in america, they have to pay these people reasonable american salaries, so they lose a lot more money than if they were conducting research and manufacturing in another country like China or Mexico.

If these companies want to be able to continue to develop drugs to benefit society, they need to be able to fund their research and quality departments sufficiently to stay operational, so they need to produce a large enough return to do that.

I'm only familiar with specific medical devices, but I can imagine materials needed in pharma are just as expensive if jot much more (such as antibodies, with small vials running up to $15000 for certain ones).

They have every right to charge the amounts they do for their drugs, as the cost of developing just one costs them millions of dollars, and even after market approval they have to continue to provide quality system data to prove their drug remains compliant with FDA regulations.

Many companies go under because they can't meet the demands of the FDA regulations, and they can't afford to stay operational. These are businesses, not charity cases. That's how you drive innovation, through a competitive market