Addressing the nation during his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden took aim at an injustice that touches the lives of most Americans—the absurdly high cost of prescription drugs. As the president laid out, the U.S. has the highest costs on drugs in the world. Biden vowed to take action, which will undoubtedly lead to the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbyists, lawyers, and paid-for allies doubling down on their frenzied efforts to derail newly enacted drug pricing reforms in order to protect the industry’s power and profits. As important as these pricing reforms are, they target only certain parts of the drug industry’s complex, profit-making puzzle.
