By charging reasonable prices, as I said in the earlier reply - do pay attention.
But the prices charged need to take account of the time, cost and risk associated with developing a new drug. It takes roughly 15-20 years to take a new drug to approval for routine use, at a cost of over £1Billion and with over 90% of drugs that get as far as clinical trials failing to get approval.
Do you really want the public purse taking on that level of risk Steve? And if they did likely the cost of the drugs would still be similar as at would still need to take account of those huge costs for development.
There are some places where public ownership makes sense, particular where there can be no meaningful competition - railways and water companies are a good example. There are other places where private enterprise is better placed to take the risk, and reasonably would expect to benefit through potential profit should they take the risk. The development of new pharmaceutical products seems to be a good example of the latter.
If government wants to reduce the costs for new drugs the place to look it the drug development pathway - how this highly bureaucratic regulatory system can be streamlined, without increasing risk to patients.
