16 May 2016 - As prices soar, US drug makers say they bear an unfair burden.

The soaring cost of prescription medicines has become a sensitive issue in the US, which operates a free-market system where drugmakers can name their prices.

A host of pantomime villains have captured the public imagination, not least Martin Shkreli, the 32-year old pharma entrepreneur who last year became an international pariah after purchasing and then hiking the price of a drug given to Aids and cancer patients from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Meanwhile, presidential candidates are tripping over themselves to promise a crackdown if elected to the White House in November. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, has decried “outrageous price gouging” and pledged to “go after” miscreant drugmakers. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has said he wants to reduce the amount taxpayers spend on medicines by hundreds of billions of dollars.

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