The culprit is the pharmaceutical monopoly. With a drug patent, a pharmaceutical company can block other companies from selling a much cheaper generic version. Preventing competition, these patents lead to medicines like the heart disease drug Lipitor costing over $270 for a packet of 100 tablets back when it was patented.

The best way to lower these prices is to abolish these patents. However, abolishing drug patents would depress innovation which is happening in India. The solution is to abolish drug patents but also adopt a prize system where the first to develop a drug receives a monetary prize. Afterwards, anyone can develop said drug. This rewards innovation and promotes competition.

The prize system is simple. Instead of a company developing a drug and holding the rights for years before other companies receive production rights, they get a single prize and anyone can make it. Say Moderna develops a vaccine for the common cold. They develop it, get a few billion, and the drug can be made by anyone. Moderna can still sell it but will have to compete with other drug companies. This will lead to lower prices as each company tries to one-up the other. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes, the prize system "…could do a far better job than patents, both in directing innovation and ensuring that the benefits of that knowledge are enjoyed as widely as possible…" Diversification of knowledge will lead to lower prices and, perhaps, increase the likelihood of more drugs being developed by more people.