The cost of research and development per approved drug comes out to around $1-2 billion, while the cost of developing a single drug if it&#x27;s successful is about $300 million. The vast disparity in prices here is the cost of pursuing failed drugs.<p>It&#x27;s really not clear that government could develop drugs more cheaply. If you want to bring down the price of drug development, the primary thing you need to do is to discover which of your candidates is not promising and kill them much earlier in the pipeline. This sort of task is not one of government&#x27;s core competencies (particularly if the legislature decides it wants a say in things).