why not attack the problem politically?- the reason drugs are so expensive in the US is that the drug companies lobbied the government to set drug prices via Medicare, rather than letting the government negotiate the price-  not only is this unethical, it's massively inefficient, and leads to greater cost disparities-  so, if we let Medicare ( a massive drug purchaser) negotiate prices, the drug companies will be forced to bring their exorbitant prices down to rational levels, and some of the cost problem you cite will be moot- also, banning TV ads for drugs alone would save billions of $, but of course the drug companies would pocket the $- but at least in that case, there could be no more lying that they spend more for research than marketing