i’m going to go ahead and say that it costs less than $3 for non-branded medications.
whats more is that the pharmeceutical industry, although competitive, is also one where collusion is rampant for various purposes… one of those is to keep prices high.
example: pharmecuetical companies declined to sell or give their AIDS medication to Africa because they couldnt make any money on it or because it would reduce the price they could charge in richer markets.
eventually they were forced to send the medication there and, as predicted, a fair bit of it ended up online at prices below their colluded market price.
another example that i worked on in University was a loosely based case study on an actual company that was developing a replacement, artificial blood plasma.
one had reached approval stage for use in animals, however, the human plasma was not yet at the appoval stage. a very significant factor in the pricing of the animal plasma was not only what people would be willing to pay but how the price in animal plasma now would affect the price of the human plasma at the release date.
despite the costs being very similar the target price for the human blood replacement was more than 3 times higher than the animal plasma… that is because if it is cheaper to buy a new cat, then fuck Mr. Tipps, buy a new cat. but humans are far less price sensitive with their own health.
drug prices are not cost based, they are market based.
when you churn out 1,000,000,000 of the same pill on an assembly line the cost is far less than a penny each… then 20 cents for the bottle… the rest is distribution and then paying off the people that approved it through the FDA